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MORE MYSTERY TALES 
FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 


BOOKS 

Edited by ELVA S. SMITH 

Cataloguer of Children’s Books, Carnegie Library 
of Pittsburgh 

Illustrated Cloth $2.00 each 

GOOD OLD STORIES for Boys and Girls 
MYSTERY TALES for Boys and Girls 
PEACE AND PATRIOTISM 
HEROINES OF HISTORY AND LEGEND 
MORE MYSTERY TALES for Boys and 
Girls 


Edited by ELVA S. SMITH and 
ALICE I. HAZELTINE 

St. Louis Public Library 

CHRISTMAS IN LEGEND AND STORY 




“Is this thy work?” — Page 262 




MORE MYSTERY TALES 

FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 

SELECTED BY 

ELYA S. SMITH 

1 1 

Frontispiece by Frank T. Merrill 


Decorations By 



BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 


Copyright, 1922, 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 

All Rights Reserved 


More Mystery Tales 
For Boys and Girls 


Printed in U. S. A. 


IRorwooD ipress 

BERWICK & SMITH CO. 
Norwood, Mass. 


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PREFACE 


Many years ago, amid the arid wastes of a New 
England Sunday School library, I once chanced 
upon an oasis — George MacDonald’s “ Warlock 
o’ Glenwarlock.” In spite of its more than seven 
hundred pages and its difficult Scotch dialect, I re- 
turned to it again and again; but the lodestone of 
attraction was not, I fear, the fine and unworldly 
characters of the old laird and his son, or the de- 
scriptions of Old World life and scenery; still less 
the sermons, though these were excellent, or the 
good advice, which the author so liberally bestowed 
upon the reader. It was rather the lure of the 
haunted chamber, the ghostly appearances of the 
auld captain, commonly reputed a pirate, the slow 
unraveling of the mystery, and the final discovery 
of the treasure, the wonderful, glowing mass of 
jewels, so artfully hidden away. A glance through 
the pages of the book still brings back the breath- 
less thrill of yore, when the opening up of the se- 
cret cavity in the wall revealed the toy horse in his 
prison stall. Cosmo had at last caught his “ naig 
he had but to 


5 


6 


Preface 


“ pu’ his tail ; 

In his hin’ heel ca 5 a nail ; 

Rug his lugs frae ane anither — 

Stan 5 up, an 5 ca’ the king [his] brither.” 

“ A good, clean story,” some one has penciled in 
a library copy ; but it is little known now, and most 
boys and girls, with scores of attractive and beau- 
tifully illustrated books from which to choose, 
would probably look somewhat askance at its plain 
cover, closely printed pages, and old-fashioned pic- 
tures. The author himself characterized “ War- 
lock o’ Glenwarlock ” as “ homely,” but it had the 
qualities which irresistibly attracted the young peo- 
ple of the eighties and nineties — the elements of 
mystery and romance, the background of the un- 
known, the suggestion of the supernatural — and 
these qualities are equally fascinating to the boys 
and girls of to-day. “ Please give me a good 
mystery tale ” is one of the most frequent requests 
in library children’s rooms. Literary fashions, or 
methods, may have changed somewhat in the in- 
tervening years ; but still 

“ It is very good indeed, 

When the nights are dark and cold, 

Near the friendly hearth to read, 

Tales of ghosts and buried gold.” 


Preface 7 

It is to meet this need that some of the best short 
stories and story-poems have been brought together 
in this book and its companion volume, “ Mystery 
Tales for Boys and Girls.” As in the earlier col- 
lection, the selections are chiefly legendary in char- 
acter; but they are varied in setting and incident, 
and cover a wide range of time from the days of the 
Emperor Maximus to the Great War of the twen- 
tieth century. Though the plot interest of longer 
narratives is wanting, herein will be found mystic 
talismans, spectral lights, phantom ships, warlocks 
and witches, ghosts and wizards, hidden treasure, 
and strange enchantments. The stories and poems 
are not limited in their interest to any particular 
period; they may be enjoyed throughout the year; 
but they are especially appropriate for use at the 
Hallowe’en season and will help to meet the in- 
creased demand for mystery tales at this time. 
Many of them, it is hoped, will suggest other read- 
ing, or lead to the original volumes from which 
these selections have been taken. “ Redgauntlet,” 
the source of “ Wandering Willie’s tale,” tells, for 
instance, the interesting story of a Jacobite con- 
spiracy; Irving’s “Alhambra ” is a mine of fascinat- 
ing Moorish tales; the Welsh legend of Maxen 
Wledig, only a part of which is included here, is 
from “ The Mabinogion,” translated by Lady 


8 Preface 

Charlotte Guest. “ The Abbaye de Cerisy,” 
taken from “ Studies and Stories,” by Mrs. Moles- 
worth, naturally suggests the history and fiction of 
the French Revolution. For more ghost stories, 
one should read the tale of the murdered king of 
Denmark, young Hamlet's father, and the story of 
Macbeth who met the weird sisters on the blasted 
heath and saw in a vision the “ blood-bolter’d 
Banquo.” 

“ The Mystery of Old Daddy’s Window ” from 
“ The Young Mountaineers,” by Charles Egbert 
Craddock; “Howe’s Masquerade” from “Twice- 
Told Tales,” by Nathaniel Hawthorne; “A Grey- 
port Legend,” by Bret Harte; “ Friar Bacon’s 
Brazen Head ” from “ Stories from Old English 
History,” by Abby Sage Richardson; “ The Mys- 
tery of Cro-a-tan from “ Colonial Ballads, Son- 
nets, and Other Verses,” by Margaret J. Preston; 
and “ The Dead Ship of Harpswell,” by John 
Greenleaf Whittier, are used by permission of and 
by special arrangement with Houghton Mifflin 
Company, the authorized publishers. “ The Three 
Low Masses ” from “ Little French Masterpieces: 
Alphonse Daudet,” the translation by George 
Burnham Ives; and “The Bowmen” from “The 
Bowmen, and Other Legends of the War,” by 
Arthur Machen, are included through the courtesy 


Preface 9 

of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Publishers, New York 
and London. The inclusion of “ Cap’n Goldsack,” 
by William Sharp, is through the permission of 
Harper & Brothers and Mrs. William Sharp. 
“ The Highwayman,” by Alfred Noyes, is re- 
printed by special arrangement with the Frederick 
A. Stokes Company. 

Thanks are also due to Dr. Arthur Wentworth 
Hamilton Eaton for permission to reprint “ The 
Phantom Light of the Baie des Chaleurs ” from 
“Acadian Legends and Lyrics ” ; to the Atlantic 
Monthly Press for the use of the poem “ Ipswich 
Bar,” by Esther and Brainard Bates; and to the 
Overland Publishing Company for permission to 
include “Lost in the Fog,” by Noah Brooks. 
“ The Roll-Call of the Reef,” from “ Wandering 
Heath,” by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and “ The 
Miracle of the White Wolf,” from “ The White 
Wolf, and Other Fireside Tales,” are used with the 
permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons. 

Most of the selections have been given without 
change or adaptation but in a few cases they have 
been slightly shortened by the omission of an occa- 
sional sentence or paragraph not necessary to the 
understanding of the story. 

Elva S. Smith. 

Pittsburgh , 1922. 
































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CONTENTS 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues . • . 15 


Washington Irving 






The Cavern of Steenfoll 

Wilhelm Hauff 

• 

• 

• 


43 

Cap’n Goldsack .... 

William Sharp 





65 

Peter Rugg, the Missing Man 

William Austin 

• 

• 

• 

• 

67 

The Flying Dutchman 

John Boyle O’Reilly 

• 

• 

• 

• 

88 

The Flying Dutchman 

Charles Godfrey Leland 

• 

• 

• 

• 

98 

The Dead Ship of Harpswell 

John Greenleaf Whittier 

• 

• 


• 

99 

The Phantom Light of the Baie des Chaleurs 

Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton 

• 

103 

The Roll-Call of the Reef . 

Sir Arthur Quiller- Couch 

• 

• 

• 


106 

Ipswich Bar .... 

Esther and Brainard Bates 





135 

A Greyport Legend 

Bret Harte 

• 

• 

• 

• 

141 

The Lake of the Dismal Swamp 

Thomas Moore 

• 

• 

• 

• 

143 

The Three Low Masses . 

Alphonse Daudet 

• 

• 

• 

• 

145 

The Highwayman 

Alfred Noyes 

• 

• 

• 

• 

159 

The Eve of St. John . • 

Sir Walter Scott 

• 

• 

• 

• 

167 


11 


12 Contents 


Wandering Willie’s Tale 

Sir Walter Scott 

• 

. 178 

Edenbain 

Alexander Smith 



Tam O’ S hanter 

Robert Burns 


. 215 

The Mystery of Old Daddy’s Window . 

Charles Egbert Craddock 


. 224 

The Dream of Maxen Wledig 

A Welsh Legend 


. 244 

Genseric 

Owen Meredith 



Friar Bacon’s Brazen Head . 

Abby Sage Richardson 


. 257 

The Mystery of Cro-A-T1n . 

Margaret J. Preston 


. 272 

Howe’s Masquerade .... 

Nathaniel Hawthorne 

• 

. 279 

The Abba ye de Cerisy .... 

Mary Louisa Molesworth 

• 

. 297 

Lost in the Fog 

Noah Brooks 



MS. Found in a Bottle .... 

Edgar Allan Poe 

• 

. 343 

The Miracle of the White Wolf 

Sir Arthur Quiller- Couch 

• 

. 361 

The Bowmen 

Arthur Machen 




MORE MYSTERY TALES 
FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 




MORE MYSTERY TALES 
FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 



LEGEND OF THE TWO DISCREET 
STATUES 

Washington Irving 

There lived once in a waste apartment of the 
Alhambra a merry little fellow, named Lope 
Sanchez, who worked in the gardens, and was as 
brisk and as blithe as a grasshopper, singing all day 
15 


16 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

long. He was the life and soul of the fortress; 
when his work was over, he would sit on one of the 
stone benches of the esplanade, strum his guitar, 
and sing long ditties about the Cid, and Bernardo 
del Carpio, and Fernando del Pulgar, and other 
Spanish heroes, for the amusement of the old sol- 
diers of the fortress; or would strike up a merrier 
tune, and set the girls dancing boleros and fan- 
dangos. 

Like most little men, Lope Sanchez had a strap- 
ping buxom dame for a wife, who could almost 
have put him in her pocket ; but he lacked the usual 
poor man’s lot — instead of ten children he had but 
one. This was a little black-eyed girl about twelve 
years of age, named Sanchica, who was as merry as 
himself, and the delight of his heart. She played 
about him as he worked in the gardens, danced to 
his guitar as he sat in the shade, and ran as wild 
as a young fawn about the groves and alleys and 
ruined halls of the Alhambra. 

It was now the eve of the blessed St. John, and 
the holiday-loving gossips of the Alhambra, men, 
women, and children, went up at night to the Moun- 
tain of the Sun, which rises above the Generalife, 
to keep their midsummer vigil on its level summit. 
It was a bright moonlight night, and all the moun- 
tains were gray and silvery, and the city, with its 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 17 

domes and spires, lay in shadows below, and the 
Vega was like a fairy-land, with haunted streams 
gleaming among its dusky groves. On the highest 
part of the mountain they lit a bonfire, according 
to an old custom of the country handed down from 
the Moors. The inhabitants of the surrounding 
country were keeping a similar vigil, and bonfires* 
here and there in the Vega, and along the folds of 
the mountains, blazed up palely in the moonlight. 

The evening was gayly passed in dancing to the 
guitar of Lope Sanchez, who was never so joyous 
as when on a holiday revel of the kind. While the 
dance was going on, the little Sanchica with some 
of her playmates sported among the ruins of an 
old Moorish fort that crowns the mountain, when, 
in gathering pebbles in the fosse, she found a small 
hand curiously carved of jet, the fingers closed, and 
the thumb firmly clasped upon them. Overjoyed 
with her good fortune, she ran to her mother with 
her prize. It immediately became a subject of 
sage speculation, and was eyed by some with super- 
stitious distrust. “ Throw it away,” said one; “ it’s 
Moorish — depend upon it, there’s mischief and 
witchcraft in it.” “ By no means,” said another; 
“ you may sell it for something to the jewelers of 
the Zacatin.” 

In the midst of this discussion an old tawny sol- 


18 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

dier drew near, who had served in Africa and was 
as swarthy as a Moor. He examined the hand with 
a knowing look. “ I have seen things of this kind,” 
said he, “ among the Moors of Barbary. It is a 
great virtue to guard against the evil eye, and all 
kinds of spells and enchantments. I give you joy, 
friend Lope ; this bodes good luck to your child.” 

Upon hearing this, the wife of Lope Sanchez 
tied the little hand of jet to a ribbon, and hung it 
round the neck of her daughter. 

The sight of this talisman called up all the fa- 
vorite superstitions about the Moors. The dance 
was neglected, and they sat in groups on the ground, 
telling old legendary tales handed down from their 
ancestors. Some of their stories turned upon the 
wonders of the very mountain upon which they were 
seated, which is a famous hobgoblin region. One 
ancient crone gave a long account of the subterra- 
nean palace in the bowels of that mountain where 
Boabdil and all his Moslem court are said to remain 
enchanted. 

“ Among yonder ruins,” said she, pointing to 
some crumbling walls and mounds of earth on a 
distant part of the mountain, “ there is a deep black 
pit that goes down, down into the very heart of the 
mountain. For all the money in Granada I would 
not look down into it. Once upon a time a poor 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 19 

man of the Alhambra, who tended goats upon this 
mountain, scrambled down into that pit after a kid 
that had fallen in. He came out again all wild and 
staring, and told such things of what he had seen, 
that every one thought his brain was turned. He 
raved for a day or two about the hobgoblin Moors 
that had pursued him in the cavern, and could 
hardly be persuaded to drive his goats up again to 
the mountain. He did so at last, but, poor man, 
he never came down again. The neighbors found 
his goats browsing about the Moorish ruins, and his 
hat and mantle lying near the mouth of the pit, 
but he was never more heard of.” 

The little Sanchica listened with breathless at- 
tention to this story. She was of a curious nature, 
and felt immediately a great hankering to peep into 
this dangerous pit. Stealing away from her com- 
panions, she sought the distant ruins, and, after 
groping for some time among them, came to a small 
hollow, or basin, near the brow of the mountain, 
where it swept steeply down into the valley of the 
Darro. In the centre of this basin yawned the 
mouth of the pit. Sanchica ventured to the verge 
and peeped in. All was as black as pitch and gave 
an idea of immeasurable depth. Her blood ran 
cold; she drew back, then peeped in again, then 
would have run away, then took another peep — the 


20 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

very horror of the thing was delightful to her. At 
length she rolled a large stone and pushed it over 
the brink. For some time it fell in silence; then 
struck some rocky projection with a violent crash; 
then rebounded from side to side, rumbling and 
tumbling, with a noise like thunder; then made a 
final splash into water, far, far below — and all was 
again silent. 

The silence, however, did not long continue. It 
seemed as if something had been awakened within 
this dreary abyss. A murmuring sound gradually 
rose out of the pit like the hum and buzz of a bee- 
hive. It grew louder and louder, there was the 
confusion of voices as of a distant multitude, to- 
gether with the faint din of arms, clash of cymbals 
and clangor of trumpets, as if some army were 
marshaling for battle in the very bowels of the 
mountain. 

The child drew off with silent awe, and hastened 
back to the place where she had left her parents and 
their companions. All were gone. The bonfire 
was expiring and its last wreath of smoke curling 
up in the moonshine. The distant fires that had 
blazed along the mountains and in the Vega were 
all extinguished and everything seemed to have 
sunk to repose. Sanchica called her parents and 
some of her companions by name, but received no 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 21 

reply. She ran down the side of the mountain, and 
by the gardens of the Generalife, until she arrived 
in the alley of trees leading to the Alhambra, when 
she seated herself on a bench of a woody recess, to 
recover breath. 

The bell from the watch-tower of the Alhambra 
tolled midnight. There was a deep tranquillity as 
if all nature slept ; excepting the low tinkling sound 
of an unseen stream that ran under the covert of 
the bushes. The breathing sweetness of the atmos- 
phere was lulling her to sleep, when her eye was 
caught by something glittering at a distance, and 
to her surprise she beheld a long cavalcade of 
Moorish warriors pouring down the mountain-side 
and along the leafy avenues. Some were armed 
with lances and shields; others with cimeters and 
battle-axes, and with polished cuirasses that flashed 
in the moonbeams. Their horses pranced proudly 
and champed upon their bits, but their tramp 
caused no more sound than if they had been shod 
with felt, and the riders were all as pale as death. 
Among them rode a beautiful lady, with a crowned 
head and long golden locks entwined with pearls. 
The housings of her palfrey were of crimson velvet 
embroidered with gold, and swept the earth ; but she 
rode all disconsolate, with eyes ever fixed upon the 
ground. 


22 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Then succeeded a train of courtiers magnificently 
arrayed in robes and turbans of divers colors, and 
amidst them, on a cream-colored charger, rode king 
Boabdil el Chico, in a royal mantle covered with 
jewels, and a crown sparkling with diamonds. The 
little Sanchica knew him by his yellow beard and his 
resemblance to his portrait, which she had often 
seen in the picture-gallery of the Generalife. She 
gazed in wonder and admiration at this royal pag- 
eant, as it passed glistening among the trees; but 
though she knew these monarchs and courtiers and 
warriors, so pale and silent, were out of the common 
course of nature, and things of magic and enchant- 
ment, yet she looked on with a bold heart, such 
courage did she derive from the mystic talisman of 
the hand, which was suspended about her neck. 

The cavalcade having passed by, she rose and 
followed. It continued on to the great Gate of 
Justice, which stood wide open. The old invalid 
sentinels on duty lay on the stone benches of the 
barbican, buried in profound and apparently 
charmed sleep and the phantom pageant swept 
noiselessly by them with flaunting banner and tri- 
umphant state. Sanchica would have followed; 
but to her surprise she beheld an opening in the 
earth, within the barbican, leading down beneath 
the foundations of the tower. She entered for a 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 23 

little distance and was encouraged to proceed by 
finding steps rudely hewn in the rock, and a vaulted 
passage here and there lit up by a silver lamp, 
which, while it gave light, diffused likewise a grate- 
ful fragrance. Venturing on, she came at last to a 
great hall, wrought out of the heart of the moun- 
tain, magnificently furnished in the Moorish style, 
and lighted up by silver and crystal lamps. Here, 
on an ottoman, sat an old man in Moorish dress, 
with a long white beard, nodding and dozing, with 
a staff in his hand, which seemed ever to be slipping 
from his grasp; while at a little distance sat a beau- 
tiful lady, in ancient Spanish dress, with a coronet 
all sparkling with diamonds and her hair entwined 
with pearls, who was softly playing on a silver lyre. 
The little Sanchica now recollected a stoiy she had 
heard among the old people of the Alhambra, con- 
cerning a Gothic princess confined in the centre of 
the mountain by an old Arabian magician, whom 
she kept bound up in magic sleep by the power of 
music. 

The lady paused with surprise at seeing a mortal 
in that enchanted hall. “Is it the eve of the blessed 
St. John? ” said she. 

“ It is,” replied Sanchica. 

“ Then for one night the magic charm is sus- 
pended. Come hither, child, and fear not. I am a 


24 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Christian like thyself, though bound here by en- 
chantment. Touch my fetters with the talisman 
that hangs about thy neck and for this night I shall 
be free.” 

So saying, she opened her robes and displayed a 
broad golden band round her waist and a golden 
chain that fastened her to the ground. The child 
hesitated not to apply the little hand of jet to the 
golden band and immediately the chain fell to the 
earth. At the sound the old man woke and began 
to rub his eyes ; but the lady ran her fingers over the 
chords of the lyre and again he fell into a slumber 
and began to nod and his staff to falter in his 
hand. 

“ Now,” said the lady, “ touch his staff with the 
talismanic hand of jet.” The child did so and it 
fell from his grasp and he sank in a deep sleep on 
the ottoman. The lady gently laid the silver lyre 
on the ottoman, leaning it against the head of the 
sleeping magician; then touching the chords until 
they vibrated in his ear — “O potent spirit of har- 
mony,” said she, “ continue thus to hold his senses 
in thraldom till the return of day. Now follow me, 
my child,” continued she, “ and thou shalt behold 
the Alhambra as it was in the days of its glory, for 
thou hast a magic talisman that reveals all enchant- 
ments.” 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 25 

Sanchica followed the lady in silence. They 
passed up through the entrance of the cavern into 
the barbican of the Gate of Justice, and thence to 
the Plaza de los Algibes, or esplanade within the 
fortress. 

This was all filled with Moorish soldiery, horse 
and foot, marshaled in squadrons, with banners 
displayed. There were royal guards also at the 
portal and rows of African blacks with drawn cim- 
eters. No one spoke a word and Sanchica passed 
on fearlessly after her conductor. Her astonish- 
ment increased on entering the royal palace, in 
which she had been reared. The broad moonshine 
lit up all the halls and courts and gardens almost as 
brightly as if it were day, but revealed a far differ- 
ent scene from that to which she was accustomed. 
The walls of the apartments were no longer stained 
and rent by time. Instead of cobwebs, they were 
now hung with rich silks of Damascus and the gild- 
ings and arabesque paintings were restored to their 
original brilliancy and freshness. The halls, no 
longer naked and unfurnished, were set out with 
divans and ottomans of the rarest stuffs, embroi- 
dered with pearls and studded with precious gems, 
and all the fountains in the courts and gardens were 
playing. 

The kitchens were again in full operation; cooks 


26 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

were busy preparing shadowy dishes, and roasting 
and boiling the phantoms of pullets and partridges; 
servants were hurrying to and fro with silver dishes 
heaped up with dainties, and arranging a delicious 
banquet. The Court of Lions was thronged with 
guards and courtiers and alfaquis, as in the old 
times of the Moors; and at the upper end, in the 
saloon of judgment, sat Boabdil on his throne, sur- 
rounded by his court, and swaying a shadowy scep- 
tre for the night. Notwithstanding all this throng 
and seeming bustle, not a voice nor a footstep was 
to be heard; nothing interrupted the midnight si- 
lence but the splashing of the fountains. 

The little Sanchica followed her conductress in 
mute amazement about the palace, until they came 
to a portal opening to the vaulted passages beneath 
the great tower of Comares. On each side of the 
portal sat the figure of a nymph, wrought out of 
alabaster. Their heads were turned aside and their 
regards fixed upon the same spot within the vault. 
The enchanted lady paused and beckoned the child 
to her. “ Here,” said she, “ is a great secret, which 
I will reveal to thee in reward for thy faith and 
courage. These discreet statues watch over a treas- 
ure hidden in old times by a Moorish king. Tell 
thy father to search the spot on which their eyes are 
fixed and he will find what will make him richer 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 27 

than any man in Granada. Thy innocent hands 
alone, however, gifted as thou art also with the tal- 
isman, can remove the treasure. Bid thy father 
use it discreetly, and devote a part of it to the per- 
formance of daily masses for my deliverance from 
this unholy enchantment.” 

When the lady had spoken these words, she led 
the child onward to the little garden of Lindaraxa, 
which is hard by the vault of the statues. The 
moon trembled upon the waters of the solitary 
fountain in the centre of the garden and shed a 
tender light upon the orange and citron trees. The 
beautiful lady plucked a branch of myrtle and 
wreathed it round the head of the child. “ Let this 
be a memento,” said she, “ of what I have revealed 
to thee, and a testimonial of its truth. My hour is 
come; I must return to the enchanted hall; follow 
me not, lest evil befall thee — farewell. Remember 
what I have said, and have masses performed for 
my deliverance.” So saying, the lady entered a 
dark passage leading beneath the tower of Comares, 
and was no longer seen. 

The faint crowing of a cock was now heard from 
the cottages below the Alhambra, in the valley of 
the Darro, and a pale streak of light began to ap- 
pear above the eastern mountains. A slight wind 
arose, there was a sound like the rustling of dry 


28 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

leaves through the courts and corridors, and door 
after door shut to with a jarring sound. 

Sanchica returned to the scenes she had so lately 
beheld thronged with the shadowy multitude, but 
Boabdil and his phantom court were gone. The 
moon shone into empty halls and galleries stripped 
of their transient splendor, stained and dilapidated 
by time, and hung with cobwebs. The bat flitted 
about in the uncertain light, and the frog croaked 
from the fish-pond. 

Sanchica now made the best of her way to a re- 
mote staircase that led up to the humble apartment 
occupied by her family. The door as usual was 
open, for Lope Sanchez was too poor to need bolt 
or bar; she crept quietly to her pallet, and, putting 
the myrtle wreath beneath her pillow, soon fell 
asleep. 

In the morning she related all that had befallen 
her to her father. Lope Sanchez, however, treated 
the whole as a mere dream and laughed at the child 
for her credulity. He went forth to his customary 
labors in the garden, but had not been there long 
when his little daughter came running to him al- 
most breathless. “Father! father!” cried she, 
“ behold the myrtle wreath which the Moorish lady 
bound round my head! ” 

Lope Sanchez gazed with astonishment, for the 


“Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 29 

stalk of the myrtle was of pure gold, and every leaf 
was a sparkling emerald! Being not much accus- 
tomed to precious stones, he was ignorant of the 
real value of the wreath, but he saw enough to con- 
vince him that it was something more substantial 
than the stuff of which dreams are generally made, 
and that at any rate the child had dreamt to some 
purpose. His first care was to enjoin the most ab- 
solute secrecy upon his daughter; in this respect, 
however, he was secure, for she had discretion far 
beyond her years or sex. He then repaired to the 
vault, where stood the statues of the two alabaster 
nymphs. He remarked that their heads were 
turned from the portal, and that the regards of each 
were fixed upon the same point in the interior of the 
building. Lope Sanchez could not but admire this 
most discreet contrivance for guarding a secret. 
He drew a line from the eyes of the statues to the 
point of regard, made a private mark on the wall, 
and then retired. 

All day, however, the mind of Lope Sanchez was 
distracted with a thousand cares. He could not 
help hovering within distant view of the two statues, 
and became nervous from the dread that the golden 
secret might be discovered. Eveiy footstep that 
approached the place made him tremble. He 
would have given anything could he but have 


30 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

turned the heads of the statues, forgetting that they; 
had looked precisely in the same direction for some 
hundreds of years, without any person being the 
wiser. 

“A plague upon them,” he would say to himself, 
“ they’ll betray all ; did ever mortal hear of such a 
mode of guarding a secret? ” Then on hearing 
any one advance, he would steal off, as though his 
very lurking near the place would awaken suspi- 
cion. Then he would return cautiously, and peep 
from a distance to see if everything was secure, but 
the sight of the statues would again call forth his 
indignation. “Ay, there they stand,” would he 
say, “ always looking, and looking, and looking, 
just where they should not. Confound them! they 
are just like all their sex ; if they have not tongues to 
tattle with, they’ll be sure to do it with their eyes.” 

At length, to his relief, the long anxious day 
drew to a close. The sound of footsteps was no 
longer heard in the echoing halls of the Alhambra; 
the last stranger passed the threshold, the great 
portal was barred and bolted, and the bat and the 
frog and the hooting owl gradually resumed their 
nightly vocations in the deserted palace. 

Lope Sanchez waited, however, until the night 
was far advanced before he ventured with his little 
daughter to the hall of the two nymphs. He found 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 31 

them looking as knowingly and mysteriously as 
ever at the secret place of deposit. “ By your 
leaves, gentle ladies/’ thought Lope Sanchez, as he 
passed between them, “ I will relieve you from this 
charge that must have set so heavy in your minds 
for the last two or three centuries.” He accord- 
ingly went to work at the part of the wall which he 
had marked, and in a little while laid open a con- 
cealed recess, in which stood two great jars of 
porcelain. He attempted to draw them forth, but 
they were immovable, until touched by the innocent 
hand of his little daughter. With her aid he dis- 
lodged them from their little niche, and found to 
his great joy that they were filled with pieces of 
Moorish gold, mingled with jewels and precious 
stones. Before daylight he managed to convey them 
to his chamber, and left the two guardian statues 
with their eyes still fixed on the vacant wall. 

Lope Sanchez had thus on a sudden become a 
rich man; but riches, as usual, brought a world of 
cares to which he had hitherto been a stranger. 
How was he to convey away his wealth with safety? 
How was he even to enter upon the enjoyment of it 
without awakening suspicion? Now, too, for the 
first time in his life the dread of robbers entered 
into his mind. He looked with terror at the inse- 
curity of his habitation, and went to work to barri- 


32 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

cade the doors and windows; yet after all his pre- 
cautions he could not sleep soundly. His usual 
gaiety was at an end, he had no longer a joke or a 
song for his neighbors, and, in short, became the 
most miserable animal in the Alhambra. His old 
comrades remarked this alteration, pitied him heart- 
ily, and began to desert him; thinking he must be 
falling into want, and in danger of looking to them 
for assistance. Little did they suspect that his 
only calamity was riches. 

The wife of Lope Sanchez shared his anxiety, 
but then she had ghostly comfort. We ought be- 
fore this to have mentioned that Lope, being rather 
a light inconsiderate little man, his wife was accus- 
tomed, in all grave matters, to seek the counsel and 
ministry of her confessor, Fray Simon, a sturdy, 
broad-shouldered, blue-bearded, bullet-headed friar 
of the neighboring convent of San Francisco, who 
was in fact the spiritual comforter of half the good 
wives of the neighborhood. He was, moreover, in 
great esteem among divers sisterhoods of nuns ; who 
requited him for his ghostly services by frequent 
presents of those little dainties and knickknacks 
manufactured in convents, such as delicate confec- 
tions, sweet biscuits and bottles of spiced cordials, 
found to be marvelous restoratives after fasts and 
vigils. 


Legend of the. Two Discreet Statues 33 

Fray Simon thrived in the exercise of his func- 
tions. His oily skin glistened in the sunshine as he 
toiled up the hill of the Alhambra on a sultry day. 
Yet notwithstanding his sleek condition, the knot- 
ted rope round his waist showed the austerity of his 
self-discipline; the multitude doffed their caps to 
him as a mirror of piety, and even the dogs scented 
the odor of sanctity that exhaled from his garments, 
and howled from their kennels as he passed. 

Such was Fray Simon, the spiritual counselor of 
the comely wife of Lope Sanchez; and as the father 
confessor is the domestic confidant of women in 
humble life in Spain, he was soon acquainted, in 
great secrecy, with the story of the hidden treasure. 

The friar opened his eyes and mouth and crossed 
himself a dozen times at the news. After a mo- 
ment’s pause, “ Daughter of my soul!” said he, 
“ know that thy husband has committed a double 
sin — a sin against both state and church! The 
treasure he hath thus seized upon for himself, being 
found in the royal domains, belongs of course to the 
crown; but being infidel wealth, rescued as it were 
from the very fangs of Satan, should be devoted to 
the church. Still, however, the matter may be ac- 
commodated. Bring hither thy myrtle wreath.” 

When the good father beheld it, his eyes twinkled 
more than ever with admiration of the size and 


34 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

beauty of the emeralds. “ This,” said he, “ being 
the first fruits of this discovery, should be dedicated 
to pious purposes. I will hang it up as a votive 
offering before the image of San Francisco in our 
chapel, and will earnestly pray to him, this very 
night, that your husband be permitted to remain in 
quiet possession of your wealth.” 

The good dame was delighted to make her peace 
with heaven at so cheap a rate, and the friar, put- 
ting the wreath under his mantle, departed with 
saintly steps toward his convent. 

When Lope Sanchez came home, his wife told 
him what had passed. He was excessively pro- 
voked, for he lacked his wife’s devotion, and had for 
some time groaned in secret at the domestic visita- 
tions of the friar. “ Woman,” said he, “ what hast 
thou done? thou hast put everything at hazard by 
thy tattling.” 

“What!” cried the good woman, “would you 
forbid my disburdening my conscience to my con- 
fessor? ” 

“ No, wife! confess as many of your own sins as 
you please ; but as to this money-digging, it is a sin 
of my own, and my conscience is very easy under 
the weight of it.” 

There was no use, however, in complaining; the 
secret was told, and, like water spilled on the sand, 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 35 

was not again to be gathered. Their only chance 
was that the friar would be discreet. 

The next day, while Lope Sanchez was abroad, 
there was a humble knocking at the door, and Fray 
Simon entered with meek and demure countenance. 

“ Daughter,” said he, “ I have earnestly prayed 
to San Francisco, and he has heard my prayer. In 
the dead of night the saint appeared to me in a 
dream, but with a frowning aspect. ‘ Why,’ said 
he, ‘ dost thou pray to me to dispense with this treas- 
ure of the Gentiles, when thou seest the poverty 
of my chapel? Go to the house of Lope Sanchez, 
crave in my name a portion of the Moorish gold, to 
furnish two candlesticks for the main altar, and let 
him possess the residue in peace.’ ” 

When the good woman heard of this vision, she 
crossed herself with awe, and going to the secret 
place where Lope had hid the treasure, she filled a 
great leathern purse with pieces of Moorish gold, 
and gave it to the friar. The pious monk bestowed 
upon her, in return, benedictions enough, if paid by 
Heaven, to enrich her race to the latest posterity; 
then slipping the purse into the sleeve of his habit, 
he folded his hands upon his breast, and departed 
with an air of humble thankfulness. 

When Lope Sanchez heard of this second dona- 
tion to the church, he had well-nigh lost his senses. 


36 More 'Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ Unfortunate man/’ cried he, “ what will become 
of me? I shall be robbed by piecemeal; I shall be 
ruined and brought to beggary! ” 

It was with the utmost difficulty that his wife 
could pacify him, by reminding him of the countless 
wealth that yet remained, and how considerate it 
was for San Francisco to rest contented with so 
small a portion. 

Unluckily, Fray Simon had a number of poor 
relations to be provided for, not to mention some 
half-dozen sturdy bullet-headed orphan children 
and destitute foundlings that he had taken under 
his care. He repeated his visits, therefore, from 
day to day, with solicitations on behalf of Saint 
Dominick, Saint Andrew, Saint James, until poor 
Lope was driven to despair, and found that unless 
he got out of the reach of this holy friar, he should 
have to make peace-offerings to every saint in the 
calendar. He determined, therefore, to pack up 
his remaining wealth, beat a secret retreat in the 
night, and make off to another part of the kingdom. 

Full of his project, he bought a stout mule for 
the purpose, and tethered it in a gloomy vault un- 
derneath the tower of the seven floors; the very 
place whence the Belludo, or goblin horse, is said to 
issue forth at midnight, and scour the streets of 
Granada, pursued by a pack of hell-hounds. Lope 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 37 

Sanchez had little faith in the story, but availed 
himself of the dread occasioned by it, knowing that 
no one would be likely to pry into the subterranean 
stable of the phantom steed. He sent off his fam- 
ily in the course of the day, with orders to wait for 
him at a distant village of the Vega. As the night 
advanced, he conveyed his treasure to the vault un- 
der the tower, and having loaded his mule, he led it 
forth, and cautiously descended the dusky avenue. 

Honest Lope had taken his measures with the ut- 
most secrecy, imparting them to no one but the 
faithful wife of his bosom. By some miraculous 
revelation, however, they became known to Fray 
Simon. The zealous friar beheld these infidel treas- 
ures on the point of slipping forever out of his 
grasp, and determined to have one more dash at 
them for the benefit of the church and San Fran- 
cisco. Accordingly, when the bells had rung for 
animas, and all the Alhambra was quiet, he stole 
out of his convent, and descending through the 
Gate of Justice, concealed himself among the 
thickets of roses and laurels that border the great 
avenue. Here he remained, counting the quarters 
of hours as they were sounded on the bell of the 
watch-tower, and listening to the dreary hootings 
of owls, and the distant barking of dogs from the 
gypsy caverns. 


38 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

At length he heard the tramp of hoofs, and, 
through the gloom of the overshading trees, imper- 
fectly beheld a steed descending the avenue. The 
sturdy friar chuckled at the idea of the knowing 
turn he was about to serve honest Lope. 

Tucking up the skirts of his habit, and wriggling 
like a cat watching a mouse, he waited until his prey 
was directly before him, when darting forth from his 
leafy covert, and putting one hand on the shoulder 
and the other on the crupper, he made a vault that 
would not have disgraced the most experienced 
master of equitation, and alighted well-forked 
astride the steed. “ Ah ha! ” said the sturdy friar, 
“ we shall now see who best understands the 
game.” 

He had scarce uttered the words when the mule 
began to kick, and rear, and plunge, and then set 
off full speed down the hill. The friar attempted 
to check him, but in vain. He bounded from rock 
to rock, and bush to bush; the friar’s habit was torn 
to ribbons and fluttered in the wind, his shaven poll 
received many a hard knock from the branches of 
the trees, and many a scratch from the brambles. 
To add to his terror and distress, he found a pack 
of seven hounds in full cry at his heels, and per- 
ceived, too late, that he was actually mounted upon 
the terrible Belludo ! 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 39 

Away then they went, according to the ancient 
phrase, “ pull devil, pull friar,” down the great 
avenue, across the Plaza Nueva, along the Zacatin, 
around the Vivarrambla — never did huntsman and 
hound make a more furious run, or more infernal 
uproar. In vain did the friar invoke every saint 
in the calendar, and the Holy Virgin into the bar- 
gain; every time he mentioned a name of the kind 
it was like a fresh application of the spur, and made 
the Belludo bound as high as a house. Through 
the remainder of the night was the unlucky Fray 
Simon carried hither and thither, and whither he 
would not, until every bone in his body ached, and 
he suffered a loss of leather too grievous to be men- 
tioned. At length the crowing of a cock gave the 
signal of returning day. At the sound the goblin 
steed wheeled about, and galloped back for his 
tower. Again he scoured the Vivarrambla, the 
Zacatin, the Plaza Nueva, and the avenue of foun- 
tains, the seven dogs yelling, and barking, and leap- 
ing up, and snapping at the heels of the terrified 
friar. The first streak of day had just appeared 
as they reached the tower; here the goblin steed 
kicked up his heels, sent the friar a somersault 
through the air, plunged into the dark vault fol- 
lowed by the infernal pack, and a profound silence 
succeeded to the late deafening clamor. 


40 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Was ever so diabolical a trick played off upon a 
holy friar? A peasant going to his labors at early 
dawn found the unfortunate Fray Simon lying 
under a fig-tree at the foot of the tower, but so 
bruised and bedeviled that he could neither speak 
nor move. He was conveyed with all care and ten- 
derness to his cell, and the story went that he had 
been waylaid and maltreated by robbers. A day or 
two elapsed before he recovered the use of his limbs ; 
he consoled himself, in the meantime, with the 
thoughts that though the mule with the treasure had 
escaped him, he had previously had some rare pick- 
ings at the infidel spoils. His first care on being 
able to use his limbs was to search beneath his pal- 
let, where he had secreted the myrtle wreath and 
the leathern pouches of gold extracted from the 
piety of Dame Sanchez. What was his dismay at 
finding the wreath, in effect, but a withered branch 
of myrtle, and the leathern pouches filled with sand 
and gravel! 

Fray Simon, with all his chagrin, had the discre- 
tion to hold his tongue, for to betray the secret 
might draw on him the ridicule of the public, and 
the punishment of his superior. It was not until 
many years afterward, on his death-bed, that he 
revealed to his confessor his nocturnal ride on the 
Belludo. 


Legend of the Two Discreet Statues 41 

Nothing was heard of Lope Sanchez for a long 
time after his disappearance from the Alhambra. 
His memory was always cherished as that of a 
merry companion, though it was feared, from the 
care and melancholy observed in his conduct shortly 
before his mysterious departure, that poverty and 
distress had driven him to some extremity. Some 
years afterward one of his old companions, an in- 
valid soldier, being at Malaga, was knocked down 
and nearly run over by a coach and six. The car- 
riage stopped; an old gentleman, magnificently 
dressed, with a bag-wig and sword, stepped out to 
assist the poor invalid. What was the astonishment 
of the latter to behold in this grand cavalier his old 
friend Lope Sanchez, who was actually celebrating 
the marriage of his daughter Sanchica with one of 
the first grandees in the land. 

The carriage contained the bridal party. There 
was Dame Sanchez, now grown as round as a barrel, 
and dressed out with feathers and jewels, and neck- 
laces of pearls, and necklaces of diamonds, and 
rings on every finger, altogether a finery of apparel 
that had not been seen since the days of Queen 
Sheba. The little Sanchica had now grown to be 
a woman, and for grace and beauty might have 
been mistaken for a duchess, if not a princess out- 
right. The bridegroom sat beside her — rather a 


42 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

withered, spindle-shanked little man, but this only; 
proved him to be of the true-blue blood; a legiti- 
mate Spanish grandee being rarely above three 
cubits in stature. The match had been of the moth- 
er’s making. 

Riches had not spoiled the heart of honest Lope. 
He kept his old comrade with him for several days ; 
feasted him like a king, took him to plays and bull- 
fights, and at length sent him away rejoicing, with 
a big bag of money for himself, and another to be 
distributed among his ancient messmates of the 
Alhambra. 

Lope always gave out that a rich brother had 
died in America and left him heir to a copper mine ; 
but the shrewd gossips of the Alhambra insist that 
his wealth was all derived from his having discov- 
ered the secret guarded by the two marble nymphs 
of the Alhambra. It is remarked that these very 
discreet statues continue, even unto the present day, 
with their eyes fixed most significantly on the same 
part of the wall; which leads many to suppose there 
is still some hidden treasure remaining there well 
worthy the attention of the enterprising traveler. 
Though others, and particularly all female visitors, 
regard them with great complacency as lasting 
monuments of the fact that women can keep a se- 
cret. 



THE CAVERN OF STEENFOLL 
A Legend of Scotland 
Wilhelm Hauff 

On one of the rocky islands off the coast of Scot- 
land lived many years ago, in the utmost harmony, 
two fishermen. They were both unmarried, were 
both without relatives, and supported themselves by 
their common labor. In age they were nearly 
equal, but in person and disposition they resembled 
each other as little as an eagle and a seal. 

Donald Douglas was a short, thick-set man, with 
a broad face and good-humored, laughing eyes, 
where care and sorrow seemed to be total strangers. 

43 


44 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

He was sleepy and torpid as well as fat, and on 
him fell the cares of the household, cooking and 
baking, making nets for catching fish, and a large 
share of the cultivation of the little field around the 
cottage. 

His companion was diametrically his opposite; 
tall and spare, with the eyes of a hawk, and a high, 
arched nose. He was known as the most energetic 
and successful fisherman, the most daring climber 
for birds, the busiest farmer, and the shrewdest 
merchant in Kirkwall; but, as his wares were good 
and his dealings rigidly honest, every one was ready 
to trade with him, and William Falke — so the coun- 
try people called him — and his friend Donald 
Douglas, with whom the former, notwithstanding 
his avarice, ungrudgingly divided his hard-earned 
gains, made not only a comfortable livelihood, but 
were in a fair way to reach a decent independence. 

But independence merely was not the goal at 
which Falke’s avarice aimed; he wished to be rich, 
— very rich; and, as he had early discovered that 
wealth came but slowly by the common highway of 
industry, he formed the idea at last that he should 
obtain the object of his ambition by some unfore- 
seen and sudden stroke of fortune; and, when once 
this belief had obtained possession of his vigorous 
mind, he found room in it for no other idea, and 


45 


The Cavern of Steenfoll 

began to talk of the subject to Donald Douglas as 
if it were a matter of absolute certainty. The lat- 
ter, who took for gospel everything Falke said, told 
it about among his neighbors, and the rumor soon 
spread that William Falke had either actually sold 
himself for money to the Evil One, or that he had 
had an offer to that end from the Prince of the 
Lower World. 

At first Falke laughed at these reports ; but grad- 
ually his mind adopted the idea that some spirit 
could disclose a treasure to him if he would, and he 
ceased to contradict his neighbors when they ques- 
tioned him concerning his fatal bargain. He con- 
tinued to follow his business, but with far less zeal 
than he had formerly shown, and often lost the time 
which he had been wont to devote to fishing and 
other useful labors, in idle search for means by 
which suddenly to obtain enormous riches. As ill 
luck would have it, moreover, as he was standing 
one day on the seashore, gazing with excited hopes 
over the restless ocean, a big wave rolled up to his 
feet, among a mass of loose seaweed and pebbles, a 
yellow bullet — a bullet of precious gold. 

William stood like one entranced; his hopes then 
had not been mere idle dreams, for the sea had given 
him gold, pure and precious gold, perhaps the relic 
of some heavy ingot which the waves had worn 


46 'More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

away against the ocean bed to the size of a rifle- 
ball. And now his imagination conceived the idea 
that a richly-freighted vessel must have been 
wrecked years ago on this shore, and that he was 
the one marked out by destiny to discover its treas- 
ures. 

Henceforth, this was his sole aim in life; musing 
ever on his hopes, reserved in the presence of his 
closest friends, he neglected all other pursuits to 
spend his days and nights on this beach, where he 
passed the time in casting into the sea, not nets for 
fishes, but a peculiarly constructed scoop for the 
recovery of sunken gold. But he found nothing 
save poverty, for his own earnings utterly ceased, 
and Donald’s indolent labors were not sufficient to 
support both. In his search for greater treasures 
vanished not only the gold he had obtained by 
chance, but by degrees the whole accumulations of 
the two friends. But, as in earlier times Douglas 
had trusted to Falke for the greater part of his 
support, so now he submitted without a murmur 
to his comrade’s profitless aberrations; and it was 
precisely this submissive patience which incited 
Falke still more to continue his unceasing search 
for treasure. 

And what urged him to increased exertions was 
that, as often as he lay down to rest his weary limbs. 


47 


The Cavern of Steenfoll 

his ear caught a whisper of strange words, whose 
meaning at the time he thought he understood, and 
which, nevertheless, he could never remember on 
waking. To be sure, he knew not what connection 
this circumstance, strange as it was, had with his 
present efforts; but, on a disposition like William 
Falke’s, every incident had its effect, and this mys- 
terious whisper only helped to strengthen him in 
the belief that some great good fortune was in store 
for him, which assumed in his uncultivated mind 
only the shape of a huge pile of gold. 

One day a tempest overtook him on the shore 
where he had found the golden bullet, and its se- 
verity drove him to take refuge in a neighboring 
cave. This cave, which the inhabitants called the 
Cavern of Steenfoll, consisted of a long subter- 
ranean passage, open to the sea by two wide 
mouths, through which the waves rushed with a 
roar like that of an angry lion. It was accessible 
from the land only in one place, a crevice opening 
above, and was rarely visited by any but adven- 
turous boys, while to its natural dangers was added 
the tradition of its being haunted. 

William descended this crevice with much diffi- 
culty, and perched himself on a rock under an over- 
hanging cliff, where, with the roaring waves at his 
feet and the storm above his head, he fell into his 


48 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

usual train of thought about the wrecked ship. 
Spite of all his inquiries, he had never been able to 
learn, even from the old residents of the place, of 
any shipwreck in the neighborhood. 

How long he sat there, he was himself uncon- 
scious; but, waking at last from his dreamy abstrac- 
tion, he discovered that the storm was over, and he 
was about to reascend to the upper air, when a voice 
issued from the deep, and the word “Carmilhan ” 

- fell distinctly on his ear. Terrified, he hastened to 
escape from the cave and gazed down into the 
empty abyss. “ Great God! ” he cried, “ that is the 
word which has pursued me in my dreams. For 
the love of heaven, what can it mean? ” 

“Carmilhan!” was sighed once more by the 
voice, as he took his last step out of the cavern, and 
he fled like a frightened doe to his hut. 

But William was no coward. The thing had 
come upon him unexpectedly; hut his thirst for gold 
was too strong to permit him to be deterred by an 
appearance of danger from following his perilous 
path. He persevered. Once, late in the night, 
while fishing for treasure by moonlight near the 
cavern of Steenfoll, his scoop was caught by some- 
thing beneath the water. He pulled with all his 
force, but the mass remained immovable. Mean- 
while the wind increased, dark clouds enveloped the 


49 


The Cavern of Steenfoll 

heavens, his boat rocked violently and threatened 
to overset. But F alke was not to be diverted from 
his purpose. He pulled and pulled till the resist- 
ance at length ceased, and, feeling no weight, he 
supposed his rope had parted. But at the same 
instant that the clouds rolled together and con- 
cealed the moon, a round, dark mass appeared 
above the surface, and the external “ Carmilhan ” 
sounded in his ear. He extended his arm to grasp 
the prize, but it vanished instantly in the pitchy 
darkness, and the fury of the gale compelled him 
to seek shelter under the neighboring cliff. He fell 
asleep from mere exhaustion, to suffer anew in his 
dreams, through the power of his imagination, the 
misery to which his restless thirst for riches sub- 
jected him during the day. 

When he awoke, the early beams of the rising 
sun were glancing from the now tranquil mirror of 
the ocean. He was on the point of starting again 
to resume his accustomed labors, when he noticed 
something approaching in the distance. He soon 
perceived it to be a boat, and recognized in it a hu- 
man figure; and was startled to observe that it was 
advancing with no assistance from sail or oar, and 
that its prow pointed steadily to the shore, although 
its occupant seemed unconscious of its course. 

The boat continued to advance, and at length 


50 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

stopped alongside of William’s skiff. The voyager 
proved to be a little, shriveled man, in a suit of yel- 
low linen and tall red night-cap, who sat, with his 
eyes shut, as immovable as any corpse. After 
shouting at and punching him to no purpose, Falke 
was on the point of attaching a rope to the boat and 
towing it away, when the little man opened his eyes 
and began to speak in a tone which filled even the 
stout-hearted fisherman with horror. 

“ Where am I? ” he asked, in Dutch, drawing a 
deep sigh. 

Falke, who had learned a little of the language 
from Dutch herring fishermen, told him the name 
of the island, and inquired who he was and what 
brought him there. 

“ I come to look for the Carmilhan / 3 

“ The Carmilhan ! In God’s name, what is the 
Carmilhan? ” cried the excited fisherman. 

“ I answer not questions put to me in that form,” 
replied the spectre, with a shudder. 

“ Well, well,” shouted Falke, “ what is the Car- 
milhan? ” 

“ The Carmilhan is now nothing; but was once 
a fair ship, laden with more gold than vessel ever 
carried before.” 

“ Where did she sink, and when? ” 

“A hundred years ago; where, I know not. I 


51 


The Cavern of Steenfoll 

come to find the place, and to recover the lost treas- 
ure. If you will help me, we will share what we 
find.” 

“ With all my heart. Tell me, what must I 
do?” 

“ A deed which requires courage. Just before 
midnight you must go to the wildest and most deso- 
late part of this island, taking with you a cow, 
which you must there slay, and have with you some 
one to wrap you in her fresh hide. Your com- 
panion must then lay you down and leave you; 
and, before an hour goes by, you will know where 
the treasures of the Carmilhan are lying.” 

“ In this way old Engrol perished, body and 
soul! ” cried Falke in terror. “ You are the Evil 
Spirit,” he continued, rowing rapidly away. 
“Away with you! I will have no dealings with 
you!” 

The little being gnashed his teeth, and yelled 
curses on the fisherman; but the latter was soon 
out of his hearing, and, after rounding a cliff, be- 
yond his sight. But the discovery that the evil one 
was seeking to avail himself of his lust for wealth, 
to entice him into his snares by a golden bait, had 
no effect in diverting the deluded man from his 
purpose. On the contrary, he even hoped to take 
advantage of the assistance, without placing him- 


52 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

self in the clutches, of the fiend; so, continuing to 
dredge for gold off the desolate coast, he neglected 
utterly the independence which the rich fishing- 
grounds in the neighboring waters offered him, and 
sank with his companion day by day into deeper 
poverty. 

Yet, although this state of things was due solely 
to Falke’s infatuation, and the providing suste- 
nance for both now fell wholly on Donald, the latter 
never complained. He showed him always the 
same devotion, the same confidence in his superior 
intellect, as in the times when his undertakings were 
successful and rational; and while this submissive- 
ness greatly increased Falke’s misery, it stimulated 
him all the more to search for gold, hoping thereby 
to indemnify his generous friend for his depriva- 
tions. All this time the devilish whisper, “ Carmil- 
han,” continued to pursue him in his slumbers. In 
short, want, hope and avarice drove him at last into 
a sort of madness ; and he resolved, finally, to carry 
out what the demon had suggested to him, although 
he knew well that, according to tradition, he was 
surrendering himself by so doing to the powers of 
darkness. 

All Donald’s dissuasions were thrown away. 
Falke grew the more determined the more the other 
implored him to desist; and the good-natured fel- 


53 


The Cavern of Steenfoll 

low consented at last to accompany him, and help 
him carry out his plan. 

The hearts of both throbbed painfully as they 
fastened a rope round the horns of a fine cow, their 
last article of property, which they had raised from 
a calf, and which they had always refused to sell, 
from an unwillingness to see her pass into the hands 
of strangers. But the evil spirit, which had got the 
mastery over Falke, stifled all the better feelings of 
his heart, and Donald was unable to resist his will. 

It was the month of September and the long 
nights of the Scottish winter had already begun. 
The evening clouds drove swiftly before the fierce 
night-winds; deep shadows filled the valleys, and 
the wet turf -bogs and the turbid channels of the 
streams looked black and fearful as the mouths of 
hell. Falke strode in front, followed by Douglas, 
shuddering at his own boldness, and tears filling his 
eyes whenever he looked at the poor animal, going 
so confidingly to her speedy death, to be inflicted 
by the same hand which had fed her so many years. 

They reached, at last, a narrow, marshy vale, here 
and there overgrown with moss and heath and 
sprinkled with huge boulders. A wild mountain 
chain encircled the spot, losing itself in the distance 
in the gray evening mist. The place was rarely 
visited by the foot of man and they approached, 


54 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

with hesitating steps, a huge stone lying in the mid-* 
die of this desolate spot, and from which a fright- 
ened eagle rose screaming into the air. The cow 
lowed mournfully, as if conscious of the horror of 
the place, and of her own approaching fate; and 
Donald turned aside to wipe away his streaming 
tears. He looked down the gorge which they had 
just climbed, and through which he could hear the 
distant surging of the sea; then upwards to the 
mountain peaks, on which an inky cloud had set- 
tled, and from which, at intervals, descended a hol- 
low roar. When he again looked at Falke, the lat- 
ter had bound the cow to a rock, and was standing, 
with upraised axe, to take the poor brute’s life. 

It was too much for his resolution. He fell upon 
his knees, wringing his hands. “ For heaven’s sake, 
William,” he exclaimed, in an agonizing tone, 
“spare her! O, spare yourself and me! Have 
mercy on your own soul! Or, if you are resolved 
thus to tempt your Maker, wait till to-morrow, and 
obtain some other than our darling cow for this 
wicked sacrifice.” 

“ Donald, are you mad? ” shrieked William, 
poising the axe above his head. “ Shall I spare the 
cow and starve? ” 

“ You shall not starve,” answered Donald firmly. 
“ While I have hands you shall not starve. I will 


55 


The Cavern of Steenfoll 

work for you from morning till night. But peril 
not the salvation of your soul, and let the poor 
brute live.” 

“ Take the axe then, and cleave my head,” cried 
Falke in a despairing tone. “ I go not from this 
place till I have obtained what I desire. Can you 
raise the treasures of the Carmillian ? Can your 
hands earn more than the barest necessities of life? 
But you can end my misery. Come, let me be the 
sacrifice ! ” 

“ William, I plead not for myself, but for your 
eternal happiness! Alas! this is the altar of the 
Piets, and the sacrifice you bring belongs to hell.” 

“ I deny it,” cried Falke, with a frantic laugh. 
“ Douglas, you are mad, and make me mad! But 
here,” he continued, throwing away the axe, and 
taking his knife as if to plunge it into his heart; 
“ here, keep the cow at the price of your friend’s 
life! ” 

Donald was at his side in a moment, and snatch- 
ing the weapon of death from his hand, seized the 
axe, and swinging it round his head, brought it 
down with such force on the forehead of the loved 
animal that, without a shudder, it fell dead at its 
master’s feet. 

A flash of lightning, accompanied by a terrific 
peal of thunder, followed this hasty deed; and 


56 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Falke stared at his friend with the look with which 
a man wonders at a child who has ventured to do 
what he himself lacks courage to attempt. Doug- 
las, however, seemed neither terrified by the thun- 
der nor disconcerted by the bewildered gaze of his 
companion, but bent over the cow without a word 
and began to take off its hide. When Falke had 
recovered his composure, he helped him in the oper- 
ation, but with a reluctance as visible as he had 
previously shown anxiety. Meanwhile the tempest 
had increased in fury, the thunder echoed in the 
mountains, and frightful flashes of lightning illu- 
minated the scanty herbage of the defile, while the. 
wind, which had not yet reached this altitude, filled 
the lower valleys with its wild howling. Both men 
found themselves drenched to the skin by the time 
they had finished stripping off the hide. They 
spread it out on the ground and Donald bound 
Falke firmly into it. When this was done the poor 
man for the first time broke the prolonged silence, 
and, looking down compassionately on his friend, 
asked in a trembling voice: 

“ Can I do anything more for you, William? ” 

“ Nothing more! ” answered Falke. “ Farewell!” 

“Farewell!” replied Donald. “God protect 
you, and pardon you as I do ! ” 

These were the last words which Falke heard 


57 


The Cavern of Steenfoll 

from him, for the next moment he had disappeared 
in the increasing darkness. At the same time, one 
of the most violent tornadoes William had ever 
seen broke upon him. It began with a flash of 
lightning, which showed him not only the peaks 
and cliffs in his immediate neighborhood, but the 
valley below him, and the raging sea, and the rocky 
islands scattered about the bay, among which he 
thought he caught a glimpse of a large dis- 
masted ship, which vanished again instantly in 
the pitchy darkness. The claps of thunder 
were absolutely deafening. A large mass of 
rocks from the cliffs above rolled down from 
the mountain, narrowly missing him. The rain 
fell in such torrents that, in a few minutes, 
it had overflowed the valley with a deep flood, which 
soon rose to Falke’s shoulders; and, had not Donald 
fortunately laid him with the upper part of his 
body resting on a hillock, he would have been speed- 
ily drowned. The water continued to rise and the 
more Falke strove to release himself from his peri- 
lous position, the closer did the moist hide embrace 
him in its folds. In vain he shouted for Donald — 
his friend was far away. He dared not call on God 
in his necessity, and a shudder convulsed his frame 
when he attempted to supplicate the being to whose 
power he felt himself given over. 


58 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

The water had already risen above his shoulders ; 
already it was moistening his trembling lips. 
“ God in heaven! I am lost! ” he shrieked, as he 
felt the flood meet above his face. But at this mo- 
ment a sound like that of a neighboring waterfall 
fell faintly on his ear, and his mouth was again 
uncovered. The torrent had forced itself a passage 
through its rocky barriers. The rain moderating 
at the same time, and the darkness of the clouds 
lifting a little, his despair was somewhat mitigated, 
and a beam of hope shone in upon his soul. But, 
spite of his exhaustion from a struggle like that of 
death, and his intense desire to escape from his im- 
prisonment, the object of his desperate ambition 
had not yet been attained, and, with the disappear- 
ance of immediate danger, covetousness returned in 
all its strength. Satisfied that to obtain his wishes 
he must submit patiently to his fate, he held his 
peace, and soon fell into a deep sleep from cold and 
exhaustion. 

He had slept perhaps a couple of hours, when a 
cold wind blowing across his face, and a sound like 
that of approaching waves, roused him from his 
oblivion. The sky had again grown dark. A flash, 
like that which had preceded the first tempest, 
lighted up once more the surrounding landscape, 
and he again thought he caught a glimpse of the 


59 


The Cavern of Steenfoll 

foreign vessel hanging for a moment on a lofty 
wave, close by the cliffs of Steenfoll, and then sink- 
ing suddenly into the abyss. He continued to gaze 
intently after the phantom, for incessant flashes 
now lighted up the sea, when a mountainous billow 
rushed up the valley, and dashed him with such 
force against a rock that he lost his senses. When 
he came to himself, the storm had passed away and 
the sky was clear, though the lightning still played 
at intervals. He was lying at the foot of the moun- 
tain range enclosing the valley, and felt himself so 
shattered that he could scarcely move. He heard 
where he lay the subdued murmur of the surf, seem- 
ingly mingled with a solemn melody like church 
music. The tones were at first so faint that he 
thought them a delusion of his senses. But nearer 
and clearer they came, and it seemed to him at 
length he could distinguish the music of a psalm 
which he had heard the summer before on board a 
Dutch herring-boat. 

At last he could make out voices and thought he 
recognized the words of the song. The voices were 
now in the valley below and working himself along 
with great difficulty to a stone, on which he laid his 
head, he perceived a procession of human beings 
moving in his direction. Their faces showed signs 
of grief and misery, and their garments seemed to 


60 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

drip with water. They were now at no great dis- 
tance and their music ceased. At their head went 
several musicians, followed by a number of sailors, 
and behind came a tall, powerful man, in an anti- 
quated, gold-embroidered dress, a sword by his side, 
and in his hand a thick Spanish cane with a golden 
head. At his left walked a negro boy, handing his 
master from time to time a long pipe, from which 
he drew in several solemn draughts of smoke and 
strode on. He drew himself up to his full height 
before Falke, and other less sumptuously dressed 
men arranged themselves on either side, all with 
pipes in their hands. Other persons followed these, 
among whom were several women, some of whom 
carried little children in their arms, or led them by 
the hand. All were in handsome but old-fashioned 
garments. A crowd of Dutch sailors closed the 
procession, each holding between his teeth a short, 
black pipe, which he smoked in gloomy silence. 

The fisherman looked with terror on this singular 
assemblage, but the expectation of what was to en- 
sue sustained his courage. They stood around him 
for a long time, and the smoke from their pipes 
rose in a cloud above their heads. The crowd con- 
tinued to close up on Falke, and thicker and 
thicker poured the clouds from their mouths 
and pipes. Falke was a bold, determined man; 


61 


The Cavern of Steenfoll 

he had braced himself for something super- 
natural; but when he saw this mysterious group 
pressing slowly upon him, as if to crush him 
with their weight, his courage fell, the sweat 
rolled from his brow, and he thought he should 
die of terror. But imagine his horror when, 
turning his eyes, he saw the yellow dwarf at his 
head, sitting stark and stiff, as he had looked when 
he first saw him, but now, as if in ridicule of the 
whole assemblage, with a lighted pipe between his 
lips. In the deadly terror which now seized him, 
Falke shouted to the principal figure : 

“ In the name of him you serve, who are you? 
What do you require of me? ” 

The tall figure took three pulls at his pipe, more 
solemnly than before, and, handing it to his servant, 
answered: 

“ I am Alfred Franz van der Swelder, captain of 
the ship Carmilhan of Amsterdam, lost with all its 
crew on this rocky coast on its return from Batavia. 
These are my officers, these my passengers, and 
those yonder my brave sailors, who all perished with 
me. Why have you summoned us from our dwell- 
ing below the sea? Why do you disturb our rest? ” 

“ I would know where lie the treasures of the 
Carmilhan? " 

“ At the bottom of the sea.” 


62 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 
“ Where? ” 

“ In the cavern of Steenfoll.” 

“ How shall I obtain them? ” 

“ A goose dives in the shallows after a herring. 
Are the treasures of the Carmilhan worth less? ” 

“ How much of them shall I recover? ” 

“ More than you can spend.” 

The yellow dwarf grinned, and the whole group 
burst into loud laughter. 

“ Have you finished? ” asked the captain. 

“ I have. Farewell! ” 

“Farewell, till we meet again!” answered the 
Dutchman; and turned to go. 

The musicians placed themselves in front, and the 
procession moved away in the same order in which 
it came, while the solemn song, which they had sung 
while approaching, grew gradually fainter in the 
distance, till it lost itself in the murmur of the surf. 

Falke now put forth his last remaining strength 
and succeeded at length in liberating one arm, with 
which he untied the cords, and at last extricated 
himself wholly from the hide. He hurried home 
without turning his head and found poor Donald 
lying senseless on the ground. He brought him to 
his senses with much difficulty and the good fellow 
wept aloud for joy at seeing alive the friend whom 
he had supposed lost forever. This gleam of happi- 


63 


The Cavern of Steenfoll 

ness quickly vanished when he learned from him 
the desperate undertaking he was now resolved on. 

“ I would rather perish, body and soul, than en- 
dure longer these naked walls, this abject wretched- 
ness. Follow me or not — I go.” 

With these words, Falke seized a torch, and, 
winding a rope round his waist, hastened away. 
Donald followed him as quickly as he could, and 
found him already standing on the precipice on 
which he had in former times found shelter from 
the storm, and about to let himself down by the 
rope into the black and roaring abyss. Finding 
that his dissuasions had no influence on the unhappy 
maniac, he made ready to follow him down; but 
Falke ordered him to remain above and hold the 
cord. With frightful exertion, for which only the 
maddest avarice could have given him strength and 
courage, Falke clambered into the abyss, and stood 
at last on a projecting rock under which the black 
and foam-streaked billows rushed thundering in. 

He looked anxiously around, and saw at length 
something shining dimly beneath the water. He 
laid down his torch, and, leaping in, grasped some 
heavy object, which he succeeded in raising. It was 
an iron chest filled with gold pieces. He told his 
companion what he had found, but turned a deaf 
ear to his earnest entreaties to be satisfied with his 


64 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

success and reascend. Falke thought this was but 
the first fruits of his long and arduous toils. He 
again sprang in. A loud peal of scornful laughter 
sounded through the cavern, and William Falke 
was never seen again ! 

Donald went home alone, an altered man. The 
shocks which his feeble brain had received destroyed 
his mind. He left everything to go to ruin, and 
wandered about day and night, gazing vacantly 
around, an object of pity and sympathy to all his 
former friends. One of the fishermen insists that 
he recognized William Falke one stormy night 
standing on the shore among the crew of the Car - 
milhan. On the same night vanished also Donald 
Douglas. 

He was sought for in every direction without 
success. Tradition says, however, that he has often 
been seen since standing with Falke among the men 
of the spectre ship, which since that time has annu- 
ally been visible in the cavern of Steenfoll. 


CAP’N GOLDSACK 
William Sharp 

Down in the yellow bay where the scows are sleep- 
ing, 

Where among the dead men the sharks flit to and 
fro — 

There Cap’n Goldsack goes, creeping, creeping, 
creeping, 

Looking for his treasure down below! 

Yeo, yeo, heave-a-yeo! 

Creeping, creeping, creeping down 
below — 

Yo! ho! 

Down among the tangleweed where the dead are 
leaking 

With the ebb an’ flow o’ water through their ribs 
an’ hollow bones, 

Isaac Goldsack stoops alow, seeking, seeking, 
seeking. 

What’s he seeking there amidst a lot o’ dead 
men’s bones? 

Yeo, yeo, heave-a-yeo! 

Seeking, seeking, seeking down below — 
Yo! ho! 

65 


66 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Twice a hundred year an’ more are gone acrost the 
bay, 

Down acrost the yellow bay where the dead are 
sleeping; 

But Cap’n Goldsack gropes an’ gropes from year- 
long day to day — 

Cap’n Goldsack gropes below, creeping, creep- 
ing, creeping: 

Yeo, yeo, heave-a-yeo! 

Creeping, creeping, creeping down 
below — 

Yo! ho! 



PETER RUGG, THE MISSING MAN 
William Austin 

From Jonathan Dunwell of New York, to Mr. 
Herman Krauff. 

Sir , — Agreeably to my promise, I now relate to 
you all the particulars of the lost man and child 
which I have been able to collect. It is entirely 
owing to the humane interest you seemed to take in 
the report, that I have pursued the inquiry to the 
following result. 

You may remember that business called me to 
Boston in the summer of 1820 . I sailed in the 
packet to Providence, and when I arrived there I 
67 


68 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

learned that every seat in the stage was engaged. 
I was thus obliged either to wait a few hours or 
accept a seat with the driver, who civilly offered me 
that accommodation. Accordingly, I took my seat 
by his side, and soon found him intelligent and com- 
municative. When we had traveled about ten 
miles, the horses suddenly threw their ears on their 
necks, as flat as a hare’s. Said the driver, “ Have 
you a surtout with you? ” 

“ No,” said I; “ why do you ask? ” 

“ You will want one soon,” said he. “ Do you 
observe the ears of all the horses? ” 

“ Yes; and was just about to ask the reason.” 

“ They see the storm-breeder, and we shall see 
him soon.” 

At this moment there was not a cloud visible 
in the firmament. Soon after, a small speck ap- 
peared in the road. 

“ There,” said my companion, “ comes the storm- 
breeder. He always leaves a Scotch mist behind 
him. By many a wet jacket do I remember him. I 
suppose the poor fellow suffers much himself — 
much more than is known to the world.” 

Presently a man with a child beside him, with a 
large black horse, and a weather-beaten chair, once 
built for a chaise-body, passed in great haste, ap- 
parently at the rate of twelve miles an hour. He 


69 


Peter Pugg , the Missing Man 

seemed to grasp the reins of his horse with firmness, 
and appeared to anticipate his speed. He seemed 
dejected, and looked anxiously at the passengers, 
particularly at the stage-driver and myself. In a 
moment after he passed us, the horses’ ears were 
up, and bent themselves forward so that they nearly 
met. 

“ Who is that man? ” said I; “ he seems in great 
trouble.” 

“ Nobody knows who he is, but his person and 
the child are familiar to me. I have met him more 
than a hundred times, and have been so often asked 
the way to Boston by that man, even when he was 
traveling directly from that town, that of late I have 
refused any communication with him; and that is 
the reason he gave me such a fixed look.” 

“ But does he never stop anywhere? ” 

“ I have never known him to stop anywhere longer 
than to inquire the way to Boston; and let him be 
where he may, he will tell you he cannot stay a mo- 
ment, for he must reach Boston that night.” 

We were now ascending a high hill in Walpole; 
and as we had a fair view of the heavens, I was 
rather disposed to jeer the driver for thinking of 
his surtout, as not a cloud as big as a marble could 
be discerned. 

“ Do you look,” said he, “ in the direction whence 


70 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

the man came ; that is the place to look. The storm 
never meets him ; it follows him.” 

We presently approached another hill; and when 
at the height, the driver pointed out in an eastern 
direction a little black speck about as big as a hat. 
“ There,” said he, “ is the seed-storm. We may 
possibly reach Polley’s before it reaches us, but the 
wanderer and his child will go to Providence 
through rain, thunder, and lightning.” 

And now the horses, as though taught by in- 
stinct, hastened with increased speed. The little 
black cloud came on rolling over the turnpike, and 
doubled and trebled itself in all directions. The 
appearance of this cloud attracted the notice of all 
the passengers, for after it had spread itself to a 
great bulk it suddenly became more limited in cir- 
cumference, grew more compact, dark, and consoli- 
dated. And now the successive flashes of chain 
lightning caused the whole cloud to appear like a 
sort of irregular network, and displayed a thou- 
sand fantastic images. The driver bespoke my at- 
tention to a remarkable configuration in the cloud. 
He said every flash of lightning near its centre dis- 
covered to him, distinctly, the form of a man sit- 
ting in an open carriage drawn by a black horse. 
But in truth I saw no such thing; the man’s fancy 
was doubtless at fault. It is a very common thing 


Peter Rugg, the Missing Man 71 

for the imagination to paint for the senses, both in 
the visible and invisible world. 

In the meantime the distant thunder gave notice 
of a shower at hand; and just as we reached Pol- 
icy’s tavern the rain poured down in torrents. It 
was soon over, the cloud passing in the direction of 
the turnpike toward Providence. In a few mo- 
ments after, a respectable-looking man in a chaise 
stopped at the door. The man and child in the 
chair having excited some little sympathy among 
the passengers, the gentleman was asked if he had 
observed them. He said he had met them ; that the 
man seemed bewildered, and inquired the way to 
Boston; that he was driving at great speed, as 
though he expected to outstrip the tempest; that 
the moment he had passed him, a thunder-clap 
broke directly over the man’s head, and seemed to 
envelop both man and child, horse and carriage. 
“ I stopped,” said the gentleman, “ supposing the 
lightning had struck him, but the horse only seemed 
to loom up and increase his speed; and as well as 
I could judge, he traveled just as fast as the thun- 
der-cloud.” 

While this man was speaking, a peddler with a 
cart of tin merchandise came up, all dripping; and 
on being questioned, he said he had met that man 
and carriage, within a fortnight, in four different 


72 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

states ; that at each time he had inquired the way to 
Boston ; and that a thunder-shower like the present 
had each time deluged his wagon and his wares, 
setting his tin pots, etc., afloat, so that he had de- 
termined to get a marine insurance for the future. 
But that which excited his surprise most was the 
strange conduct of his horse, for long before he 
could distinguish the man in the chair, his own 
horse stood still in the road, and flung back his ears. 
“ In short,” said the peddler, “ I wish never to see 
that man and horse again; they do not look to me 
as though they belonged to this world.” 

This was all I could learn at that time; and the 
occurrence soon after would have become with me, 
“ like one of those things which had never hap- 
pened,” had I not, as I stood recently on the door- 
step of Bennett’s hotel in Hartford, heard a man 
say, “ There goes Peter Rugg and his child ! he 
looks wet and weary, and farther from Boston than 
ever.” I was satisfied it was the same man I had 
seen more than three years before ; for whoever has 
once seen Peter Rugg can never after be deceived 
as to his identity. 

“Peter Rugg!” said I; “and who is Peter 
Rugg?” 

“ That,” said the stranger, “ is more than any one 
can tell exactly. He is a famous traveler, held in 


73 


Peter Pugg , the Missing Man 

light esteem by all innholders, for he never stops to 
eat, drink or sleep. I wonder why the government 
does not employ him to carry the mail.” 

“ Ay,” said a bystander, “ that is a thought 
bright only on one side; how long would it take in 
that case to send a letter to Boston, for Peter has 
already, to my knowledge, been more than twenty 
years traveling to that place.” 

“ But,” said I, “ does the man never stop any- 
where; does he never converse with any one? I 
saw the same man more than three years since, 
near Providence, and I heard a strange story 
about him. Pray, sir, give me some account of 
this man.” 

“ Sir,” said the stranger, “ those who know the 
most respecting that man, say the least. I have 
heard it asserted that Heaven sometimes sets a 
mark on a man, either for judgment or a trial. 
Under which Peter Rugg now labors, I cannot say ; 
therefore I am rather inclined to pity than to 
judge.” 

“ You speak like a humane man,” said I; “ and 
if you have known him so long, I pray you will give 
me some account of him. Has his appearance much 
altered in that time? ” 

“ Why, yes. He looks as though he never ate, 
drank or slept; and his child looks older than him- 


74 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

self, and he looks like time broken off from eternity, 
and anxious to gain a resting-place.” 

“ And how does his horse look? ” said I. 

“ As for his horse, he looks fatter and gayer, and 
shows more animation and courage than he did 
twenty years ago. The last time Rugg spoke to me 
he inquired how far it was to Boston. I told him 
just one hundred miles. 

“ ‘ Why,’ said he, ‘ how can you deceive me so? 
It is cruel to mislead a traveler. I have lost my 
way; pray direct me the nearest way to Boston? ’ 

“ I repeated, it was one hundred miles. 

“ ‘ How can you say so? ’ said he; ‘ I was told 
last evening it was but fifty, and I have traveled all 
night.’ 

“ ‘ But,’ said I, ‘ you are now traveling from Bos- 
ton. You must turn back.’ 

“‘Alas,’ said he, ‘it is all turn hack! Boston 
shifts with the wind, and plays all around the com- 
pass. One man tells me it is to the east, another to 
the west; and the guide-posts, too, they all point 
the wrong way.’ 

“ ‘ But will you not stop and rest? ’ said I; ‘ you 
seem wet and weary.’ 

“ ‘ Yes,’ said he, ‘ it has been foul weather since 
I left home.’ 

“ ‘ Stop, then, and refresh yourself.’ 


75 


Peter Rugg, the Missing Man 

“ * I must not stop; I must reach home to-night, 
if possible; though I think you must be mistaken 
in the distance to Boston.’ 

“ He then gave the reins to his horse, which he 
restrained with difficulty, and disappeared in a mo- 
ment. A few days afterward I met the man a little 
this side of Claremont , 1 winding around the hills in 
Unity, at the rate, I believe, of twelve miles an 
hour.” 

“ Is Peter Rugg his real name, or has he acci- 
dentally gained that name? ” 

“ I know not, but presume he will not deny his 
name ; you can ask him, — for see, he has turned his 
horse, and is passing this way.” 

In a moment a dark-colored, high-spirited horse 
approached, and would have passed without stop- 
ping, but I had resolved to speak to Peter Rugg, 
or whoever the man might be. Accordingly, I 
stepped into the street; and as the horse ap- 
proached, I made a feint of stopping him. The 
man immediately reined in his horse. “ Sir,” said 
I, “ may I be so bold as to inquire if you are 
not Mr. Rugg? for I think I have seen you be- 
fore.” 

“ My name is Peter Rugg,” said he. “ I have 
unfortunately lost my way; I am wet and weary, 

1 In New Hampshire. 


76 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

and will take it kindly of you to direct me to Bos- 
ton” 

“You live in Boston, do you; and in what 
street? ” 

“ In Middle Street.” 

“ When did you leave Boston? ” 

“ I cannot tell precisely; it seems a considerable 
time.” 

“ But how did you and your child become so wet? 
It has not rained here to-day.” 

“ It has just rained a heavy shower up the river. 
But I shall not reach Boston to-night if I tarry. 
Would you advise me to take the old road or the 
turnpike? ” 

“ Why, the old road is one hundred and seven- 
teen miles, and the turnpike is ninety-seven.” 

“ How can you say so? You impose on me; it is 
wrong to trifle with a traveler; you know it is but 
forty miles from Newburyport to Boston.” 

“But this is not Newburyport; this is Hart- 
ford.” 

“ Do not deceive me, sir. Is not this town New- 
buryport, and the river that I have been following 
the Merrimac? ” 

“ No, sir; this is Hartford, and the river the Con- 
necticut.” 

He wrung his hands and looked incredulous. 


77 


Peter Pugg y the Missing Man 

“ Have the rivers, too, changed their courses, as the 
cities have changed places? But see! the clouds are 
gathering in the south, and we shall have a rainy 
night. Ah! that fatal oath! ” 

He would tarry no longer; his impatient horse 
leaped off, his hind flanks rising like wings; he 
seemed to devour all before him, and to scorn all 
behind. 

I had now, as I thought, discovered a clew to the 
history of Peter Rugg; and I determined, the next 
time my business called me to Boston, to make a 
further inquiry. Soon after, I was enabled to col- 
lect the following particulars from Mrs. Croft, an 
aged lady in Middle Street, who has resided in Bos- 
ton during the last twenty years. Her narration is 
this: 

Just at twilight last summer a person stopped 
at the door of the late Mrs. Rugg. Mrs. Croft on 
coming to the door perceived a stranger with a child 
by his side, in an old weather-beaten carriage, with 
a black horse. The stranger asked for Mrs. Rugg, 
and was informed that Mrs. Rugg had died at a 
good old age, more than twenty years before that 
time. 

The stranger replied, “ How can you deceive me 
so? Do ask Mrs. Rugg to step to the door.” 

“ Sir, I assure you Mrs. Rugg has not lived here 


78 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

these twenty years; no one lives here but myself, 
and my name is Betsey Croft.” 

The stranger paused, looked up and down the 
street, and said, “ Though the paint is rather faded, 
this looks like my house.” 

“ Yes,” said the child, “ that is the stone before 
the door that I used to sit on to eat my bread and 
milk.” 

“ But,” said the stranger, “ it seems to be on the 
wrong side of the street. Indeed, everything here 
seems to be misplaced. The streets are all changed, 
the town seems changed, and what is strangest of 
all, Catherine Rugg has deserted her husband and 
child. Pray,” continued the stranger, “ has John 
Foy come home from sea? He went a long voy- 
age; he is my kinsman. If I could see him, he 
could give me some account of Mrs. Rugg.” 

“ Sir,” said Mrs. Croft, “ I never heard of John 
Foy. Where did he live? ” 

“ Just above here, in Orange-tree Lane.” 

“ There is no such place in this neighborhood.” 

“What do you tell me! Are the streets gone? 
Orange-tree Lane is at the head of Hanover Street, 
near Pemberton’s Hill.” 

“ There is no such lane now.” 

“ Madam, you cannot be serious ! But you 
doubtless know my brother, William Rugg. He 


Peter Pugg , the Missing Man 79 

lives in Royal Exchange Lane, near King 
Street.” 

“ I know of no such lane; and I am sure there is 
no such street as King Street in this town.” 

“No such street as King Street! Why, woman, 
you mock me! You may as well tell me there is no 
King George. However, madam, you see I am 
wet and weary, I must find a resting-place. I will 
go to Hart’s tavern, near the market.” 

“ Which market, sir? for you seem perplexed; we 
have several markets.” 

“ You know there is but one market near the 
town dock.” 

“ Oh, the old market; but no such person has 
kept there these twenty years.” 

Here the stranger seemed disconcerted, and ut- 
tered to himself quite audibly: “ Strange mistake; 
how much this looks like the town of Boston! 
It certainly has a great resemblance to it; but I 
perceive my mistake now. Some other Mrs. 
Rugg, some other Middle Street. — Then,” 
said he, “ Madam, can you direct me to Bos- 
ton? ” 

“ Why, this is Boston, the city of Boston; I know 
of no other Boston.” 

“ City of Boston it may be; but it is not the Bos- 
ton where I live. I recollect now, I came over a 


80 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

bridge instead of a ferry. Pray, what bridge is 
that I just came over? ” 

“ It is Charles River bridge.” 

“ I perceive my mistake ; there is a ferry between 
Boston and Charlestown; there is no bridge. Ah, 
I perceive my mistake. If I were in Boston my 
horse would carry me directly to my own door. 
But my horse shows by his impatience that he is in 
a strange place. Absurd, that I should have mis- 
taken this place for the old town of Boston! It is 
a much finer city than the town of Boston. It has 
been built long since Boston. I fancy Boston must 
lie at a distance from this city, as the good woman 
seems ignorant of it.” 

At these words his horse began to chafe, and 
strike the pavement with his forefeet. The stran- 
ger seemed a little bewildered, and said, “No home 
to-night ; ” and giving the reins to his horse passed 
up the street, and I saw no more of him. 

It was evident that the generation to which Peter 
Rugg belonged had passed away. 

This was all the account of Peter Rugg I 
could obtain from Mrs. Croft; but she directed me 
to an elderly man, Mr. James Felt, who lived near 
her, and who had kept a record of the principal oc- 
currences for the last fifty years. At my request 
she sent for him; and after I had related to him the 


81 


Peter Rugg, the Missing Man 

object of my inquiry, Mr. Felt told me he had 
known Rugg in his youth, and that his disappear- 
ance had caused some surprise; but as it sometimes 
happens that men run away, — sometimes to be rid 
of others, and sometimes to be rid of themselves, — 
and Rugg took his child with him, and his own 
horse and chair, and as it did not appear that 
any creditors made a stir, the occurrence soon 
mingled itself in the stream of oblivion; and 
Rugg and his child, horse and chair were soon for- 
gotten. 

“ It is true,” said Mr. Felt, “ sundry stories grew 
out of Rugg’s affair, whether true or false I cannot 
tell ; but stranger things have happened in my day, 
without even a newspaper notice.” 

44 Sir,” said I, 44 Peter Rugg is now living. I 
have lately seen Peter Rugg and his child, horse 
and chair; therefore I pray you to relate to me all 
you know or ever heard of him.” 

44 Why, my friend,” said James Felt, 44 that 
Peter Rugg is now a living man, I will not deny; 
but that you have seen Peter Rugg and his child is 
impossible, if you mean a small child; for Jenny 
Rugg, if living, must be at least — let me see — Bos- 
ton massacre, 1770 — Jenny Rugg was about ten 
years old. Why, sir, Jenny Rugg, if living, must 
be more than sixty years of age. That Peter Rugg 


82 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

is living is highly probable, as he was only ten years 
older than myself, and I was only eighty last 
March; and I am as likely to live twenty years 
longer as any man.” 

Here I perceived that Mr. Felt was in his dotage, 
and I despaired of gaining any intelligence from 
him on which I could depend. 

I took my leave of Mrs. Croft, and proceeded to 
my lodgings at the Marlborough Hotel. 

“ If Peter Rugg,” thought I, “ has been travel- 
ing since the Boston massacre, there is no reason 
why he should not travel to the end of time. If the 
present generation know little of him, the next will 
know less, and Peter and his child will have no hold 
on this world.” 

In the course of the evening I related my adven- 
ture in Middle Street. 

“ Ha! ” said one of the company, smiling, “ do 
you really think you have seen Peter Rugg? I 
have heard my grandfather speak of him as though 
he seriously believed his own story.” 

“ Sir,” said I, “ pray let us compare your grand- 
father’s story of Mr. Rugg with my own.” 

“ Peter Rugg, sir, — if my grandfather was 
worthy of credit, — once lived in Middle Street, in 
this city. He was a man in comfortable circum- 
stances, had a wife and one daughter, and was gen- 


83 


Peter Rugg , the Missing Man 

erally esteemed for his sober life and manners. 
But unhappily, his temper, at times, was altogether 
ungovernable, and then his language was terrible. 
In these fits of passion, if a door stood in his way, 
he would never do less than kick a panel through. 
He would sometimes throw his heels over his head, 
and come down on his feet, uttering oaths in a cir- 
cle; and thus in a rage, he was the first who per- 
formed a somersault, and did what others have since 
learned to do for merriment and money. Once 
Rugg was seen to bite a tenpenny nail in halves. 
In those days everybody, both men and boys, wore 
wigs; and Peter, at these moments of violent pas- 
sion, would become so profane that his wig would 
rise up from his head. Some said it was on account 
of his terrible language ; others accounted for it in a 
more philosophical way, and said it was caused by 
the expansion of his scalp, as violent passion, we 
know, will swell the veins and expand the head. 
While these fits were oh him, Rugg had no respect 
for heaven or earth. Except this infirmity, all 
agreed that Rugg was a good sort of a man; for 
when his fits were over, nobody was so ready to 
commend a placid temper as Peter. 

“ One morning, late in autumn, Rugg, in his own 
chair, with a fine large bay horse, took his daughter 
and proceeded to Concord. On his return a violent 


84 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

storm overtook him. At dark he stopped in Me- 
notomy, now West Cambridge, at the door of a Mr. 
Cutter, a friend of his, who urged him to tarry the 
night. On Rugg’s declining to stop, Mr. Cutter 
urged him vehemently. 4 Why, Mr. Rugg,’ said 
Cutter, 4 the storm is overwhelming you. The 
night is exceedingly dark. Your little daughter 
will perish. You are in an open chair, and the tem- 
pest is increasing.’ 4 Let the storm increase / said 
Rugg, with a fearful oath, ‘I will see home to- 
night , in spite of the last tempest , or may I never 
see home! * At these words he gave his whip to his 
high-spirited horse and disappeared in a moment. 
But Peter Rugg did not reach home that night, nor 
the next ; nor, when he became a missing man, could 
he ever be traced beyond Mr. Cutter’s, in Menot- 
omy. 

44 For a long time after, on every dark and 
stormy night the wife of Peter Rugg would fancy 
she heard the crack of a whip, and the fleet tread of 
a horse, and the rattling of a carriage passing her 
door. The neighbors, too, heard the same noises, 
and some said they knew it was Rugg’s horse; the 
tread on the pavement was perfectly familiar to 
them. This occurred so repeatedly that at length 
the neighbors watched with lanterns, and saw the 
real Peter Rugg, with his own horse and chair and 


85 


Peter Pug g] the Missing Man 

the child sitting beside him, pass directly before his 
own door, his head turned toward his house, and 
himself making every effort to stop his horse, but in 
vain. 

“ The next day the friends of Mrs. Rugg exerted 
themselves to find her husband and child. They 
inquired at every public house and stable in town; 
but it did not appear that Rugg made any stay in 
Boston. No one, after Rugg had passed his own 
door, could give any account of him, though it was 
asserted by some that the clatter of Rugg’s horse 
and carriage over the pavements shook the houses 
on both sides of the streets. And this is credible, if 
indeed Rugg’s horse and carriage did pass on that 
night; for at this day, in many of the streets, a 
loaded truck or team in passing will shake the 
houses like an earthquake. However, Rugg’s 
neighbors never afterward watched. Some of them 
treated it all as a delusion, and thought no more of 
it. Others of a different opinion shook their heads 
and said nothing. 

“ Thus Rugg and his child, horse, and chair were 
soon forgotten; and probably many in the neigh- 
borhood never heard a word on the subject. 

“ There was indeed a rumor that Rugg was seen 
afterward in Connecticut, between Sufheld and 
Hartford, passing through the country at headlong 


86 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

speed. This gave occasion to Rugg’s friends to 
make further inquiry; but the more they inquired, 
the more they were baffled. If they heard of Rugg 
one day in Connecticut, the next they heard of him 
winding round the hills in New Hampshire; and 
soon after a man in a chair, with a small child, ex- 
actly answering the description of Peter Rugg, 
would be seen in Rhode Island inquiring the way 
to Boston. 

“ But that which gave a color of mystery to the 
story of Pecer Rugg was the affair at Charlestown 
bridge. The toll-gatherer asserted that sometimes, 
on the darkest and most stormy nights, when no ob- 
ject could be discerned, about the time Rugg was 
missing, a horse and wheel-carriage, with a noise 
equal to a troop, would at midnight, in utter con- 
tempt of the rates of toll, pass over the bridge. 
This occurred so frequently that the toll-gatherer 
resolved to attempt a discovery. Soon after, at the 
usual time, apparently the same horse and carriage 
approached the bridge from Charlestown square. 
The toll-gatherer, prepared, took his stand as near 
the middle of the bridge as he dared, with a large 
three-legged stool in his hand; as the appearance 
passed, he threw the stool at the horse, but heard 
nothing except the noise of the stool skipping across 
the bridge. The toll-gatherer on the next day as- 


87 


Peter Rugg , the Missing Man 

serted that the stool went directly through the body 
of the horse, and he persisted in that belief ever 
after. Whether Rugg, or whoever the person was, 
ever passed the bridge again, the toll-gatherer 
would never tell; and when questioned, seemed anx- 
ious to waive the subject. And thus Peter Rugg 
and his child, horse, and carriage, remain a mystery 
to this day.” 

This, sir, is all that I could learn of Peter Rugg 
in Boston. 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 
John Boyle O’Reilly 

Long time ago, from Amsterdam a vessel sailed 
away, — 

As fair a ship as ever flung aside the laughing 
spray. 

Upon the shore were tearful eyes, and scarfs were 
in the air, 

As to her, o’er the Zuyder Zee, went fond adieu and 
prayer; 

And brave hearts, yearning shoreward from the 
outward-going ship, 

Felt lingering kisses clinging still to tear-wet cheek 
and lip. 

She steered for some far eastern clime, and, as she 
skimmed the seas, 

Each taper mast was bending like a rod before the 
breeze. 

Her captain was a stalwart man, — an iron heart had 
he, — 

From childhood’s days he sailed upon the rolling 
Zuyder Zee: 


88 


89 


The Flying Dutchman 

He nothing feared upon the earth, and scarcely 
heaven feared, 

He would have dared and done whatever mortal 
man had dared ! 

He looked aloft, where high in air the pennant cut 
the blue, 

And every rope and spar and sail was firm and 
strong and true. 

He turned him from the swelling sail to gaze upon 
the shore, — 

Ah ! little thought the skipper then ’twould meet his 
eye no more: 

He dreamt not that an awful doom was hanging 
o’er his ship, 

That Vanderdecken’s name would yet make pale 
the speaker’s lip. 

The vessel bounded on her way, and spire and dome 
went down, — 

Ere darkness fell, beneath the wave had sunk the 
distant town. 

No more, no more, ye hapless crew, shall Holland 
meet your eye. 

In lingering hope and keep suspense, maid, wife, 
and child shall die! 

Away, away the vessel speeds, till sea and sky 
alone 


90 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Are round her, as her course she steers across the 
torrid zone. 

Away, until the North Star fades, the Southern 
Cross is high, 

And myriad gems of brightest beam are sparkling 
in the sky. 

The tropic winds are left behind; she nears the 
Cape of Storms, 

Where awful Tempest ever sits enthroned in wild 
alarms ; 

Where Ocean in his anger shakes aloft his foamy 
crest, 

Disdainful of the weakly toys that ride upon his 
breast. 

Fierce swell the winds and waters round the Dutch- 
man’s gallant ship, 

But, to their rage, defiance rings from Vander- 
decken’s lip : 

Impotent they to make him swerve, their might he 
dares despise, 

As straight he holds his onward course, and wind 
and wave defies. 

For days and nights he struggles in the weird, un- 
earthly fight. 

His brow is bent, his eye is fierce, hut looks of deep 
affright 


The Flying Dutchman 91 

Amongst the mariners go round, as hopelessly they 
steer: 

They do not dare to murmur, but they whisper 
what they fear. 

Their black-browed captain awes them: ’neath his 
darkened eye they quail, 

And in a grim and sullen mood their bitter fate 
bewail. 

As some fierce rider ruthless spurs a timid, waver- 
ing horse, 

He drives his shapely vessel, and they watch the 
reckless course, 

Till once again their skipper’s laugh is flung upon 
the blast: 

The placid ocean smiles beyond, the dreaded Cape 
is passed! 

Away across the Indian main the vessel northward 
glides ; 

A thousand murmuring ripples break along her 
graceful sides: 

The perfumed breezes fill her sails — her destined 
port she nears, — 

The captain’s brow has lost its frown, the mariners 
their fears. 

“ Land ho ! ” at length the welcome sound the 
watchful sailor sings, 


92 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

And soon within an Indian bay the ship at anchor 
swings. 

Not idle then the busy crew; ere long the spacious 
hold 

Is emptied of her western freight, and stored with 
silk and gold. 

Again the ponderous anchor’s weighed; the shore is 
left behind, 

The snowy sails are bosomed out before the favor- 
ing wind. 

Across the warm blue Indian sea the vessel south- 
ward flies, 

And once again the North Star fades and Austral 
beacons rise. 

For home she steers ! she seems to know and answer 
to the word, 

And swifter skims the burnished deep, like some 
fair ocean-bird. 

“ For home! for home! ” the merry crew with glad- 
some voices cry, 

And dark-browed Vanderdecken has a mild light in 
his eye. 

But once again the Cape draws near, and furious 
billows rise; 

And still the daring Dutchman’s laugh the hurri- 
cane defies. 


93 


The Flying Dutchman 

But wildly shrieked the tempest ere the scornful 
sound had died, 

A warning to the daring man to curb his impious 
pride. 

A crested mountain struck the ship, and like a 
frighted bird 

She trembled ’neath the awful shock. Then Van- 
derdecken heard 

A pleading voice within the gale, — his better angel 
spoke, 

But fled before his scowling look, as mast-high 
mountains broke 

Around the trembling vessel, till the crew with 
terror paled; 

But Vanderdecken never flinched, nor ’neath the 
thunders quailed. 

With folded arms and stern-pressed lips, dark an- 
ger in his eye, 

He answered back the threatening frown that low- 
ered o’er the sky. 

With fierce defiance in his heart, and scornful look 
of flame, 

He spoke, and thus with impious voice blasphemed 
God’s holy name : — 

“ Howl on, ye winds! ye tempests, howl! your rage 
is spent in vain: 


94 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Despite your strength, your frowns, your hate, I’ll 
ride upon the main. 

Defiance to your idle shrieks! I’ll sail upon my 
path: 

I cringe not for thy Maker’s smile, — I care not for 
His wrath! ” 

He ceased. An awful silence fell: the tempest and 
the sea 

Were hushed in sudden stillness by the Ruler’s 
dread decree. 

The ship was riding motionless within the gather- 
ing gloom ; 

The Dutchman stood upon the poop and heard his 
dreadful doom. 

The hapless crew were on the deck in swooning 
terror prone, — 

They, too, were bound in fearful fate. In angered 
thunder-tone 

The judgment words swept o’er the sea: “ Go, 
wretch, accurst, condemned! 

Go sail for ever on the deep, by shrieking tempests 
hemmed. 

No home, no port, no calm, no rest, no gentle fa- 
v’ring breeze, 

Shall ever greet thee. Go, accurst! and battle with 
the seas ! 


95 


The Flying Dutchman 

Go, braggart! struggle with the storm, nor ever 
cease to live, 

But bear a million times the pangs that death and 
fear can give. 

Away ! and hide thy guilty head, a curse to all thy 
kind 

Who ever see thee struggling, wretch, with ocean 
and with wind. 

Away, presumptuous worm of earth! Go teach 
thy fellow-worms 

The awful fate that waits on him who braves the 
King of Storms! ” 

’Twas o’er. A lurid lightning flash lit up the sea 
and sky 

Around and o’er the fated ship; then rose a wailing 
cry 

From every heart within her, of keen anguish and 
despair; 

But mercy was for them no more, — it died away in 
air. 

Once more the lurid light gleamed out, — the ship 
was still at rest, 

The crew were standing at their posts; with arms 
across his breast 

Still stood the captain on the poop, but bent and 
crouching now 


96 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

He bowed beneath that fiat dread, and o’er his 
swarthy brow 

Swept lines of anguish, as if he a thousand years of 
pain 

Had lived and suffered. Then across the heaving, 
angry main 

The tempest shrieked triumphant, and the angry 
waters hissed 

Their vengeful hate against the toy they oftentimes 
had kissed. 

And ever through the midnight storm that hapless 
crew must speed; 

They try to round the stormy Cape, but never can 
succeed. 

And oft when gales are wildest, and the lightning’s 
vivid sheen 

Flashes back the ocean’s anger, still the Phantom 
Ship is seen 

Ever sailing to the southward in the fierce tornado’s 
swoop, 

With her ghostly crew and canvas, and her captain 
on the poop, 

Unrelenting, unforgiven; and ’tis said that every 
word 

Of his blasphemous defiance still upon the gale is 
heard! 


The Flying Dutchman 97 

But Heaven help the ship near which the dismal 
sailor steers, — 

The doom of those is sealed to whom that Phantom 
Ship appears: 

They'll never reach their destined port, — they'll see 
their homes no more, — 

They who see the Flying Dutchman — never, never 
reach the shore! 


THE FLYING DUTCHMAN 
Charles Godfrey Leland 

.We met the Flying Dutchman , 
By midnight he came, 

His hull was all of hell-fire, 

His sails were all aflame; 
Fire on the main-top, 

Fire on the bow, 

Fire on the gun-deck, 

Fire down below, 

Four-and-twenty dead men, 
Those were the crew, 

The devil on the bowsprit, 
Fiddled as she flew, 

We gave her the broadside, 
Right in the dip, 

J ust like a candle, 

Went out the ship. 


THE DEAD SHIP OF HARPSWELL 

John Greenleaf Whittier 

What flecks the outer gray beyond 
The sundown’s golden trail? 

The white flash of a sea-bird’s wing, 

Or gleam of slanting sail? 

Let young eyes watch from Neck and Point, 
And sea-worn elders pray, — 

The ghost of what was once a ship 
Is sailing up the bay ! 

From gray sea-fog, from icy drift, 

From peril and from pain, 

The home-bound fisher greets thy lights, 

O hundred-harbored Maine ! 

But many a keel shall seaward turn, 

And many a sail outstand, 

When, tall and white, the Dead Ship looms 
Against the dusk of land. 

She rounds the headland’s bristling pines; 
She threads the isle-set bay; 

No spur of breeze can speed her on. 

Nor ebb of tide delay. 

99 


100 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Old men still walk the Isle of Orr 
Who tell her date and name, 

Old shipwrights sit in Freeport yards 
Who hewed her oaken frame. 

What weary doom of baffled quest, 
Thou sad sea-ghost, is thine? 

What makes thee in the haunts of home 
A wonder and a sign? 

No foot is on thy silent deck, 

Upon thy helm no hand; 

No ripple hath the soundless wind 
That smites thee from the land! 

For never comes the ship to port, 
Howe’er the breeze may be; 

Just when she nears the waiting shore 
She drifts again to sea. 

No tack of sail, nor turn of helm. 

Nor sheer of veering side; 

Stern-fore she drives to sea and night. 
Against the wind and tide. 

In vain o’er Harpswell Neck the star 
Of evening guides her in ; 

In vain for her the lamps are lit 
Within thy tower, Seguin! 


101 


The Dead Ship of Harp swell 

In vain the harbor-boat shall hail, 

In vain the pilot call; 

No hand shall reef her spectral sail. 

Or let her anchor fall. 

Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy, 
Your gray-head hints of ill; 

And, over sick-beds whispering low. 

Your prophecies fulfil. 

Some home amid yon birchen trees 
Shall drape its door with woe; 

And slowly where the Dead Ship sails, 
The burial boat shall row! 

From Wolf Neck and from Flying Point, 
From island and from main, 

From sheltered cove and tided creek, 

Shall glide the funeral train. 

The dead-boat with the bearers four. 

The mourners at her stern, — 

And one shall go the silent way 
Who shall no more return! 

And men shall sigh, and women weep, 
Whose dear ones pale and pine. 

And sadly over sunset seas 
Await the ghostly sign* 


102 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

They know not that its sails are filled 
By pity’s tender breath, 

Nor see the Angel at the helm 
Who steers the Ship of Death. 


THE PHANTOM LIGHT OF THE BAIE 
DES CHALEURS 

Arthur Wentworth Hamilton Eaton 

’Tis the laughter of pines that swing and sway 
Where the breeze from the land meets the breeze 
from the bay, 

’Tis the silvery foam of the silver tide 
In ripples that reach to the forest side; 

’Tis the fisherman’s boat, in the track of sheen. 
Plying through tangled seaweed green, 

O’er the Baie des Chaleurs. 

Who has not heard of the phantom light 
That over the moaning waves at night 
Dances and drifts in endless play, 

Close to the shore, then far away. 

Fierce as the flame in sunset skies, 

Cold as the winter light that lies 

On the Baie des Chaleurs. 

They tell us that many a year ago, 

From lands where the palm and olive grow, 
Where vines with their purple clusters creep 
Over the hillsides gray and steep, 

103 


104 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

A knight in his doublet, slashed with gold, 
Famed in that chivalrous time of old, 

For valorous deeds and courage rare, 

Sailed with a princess wondrous fair 
To the Baie des Chaleurs. 

That a pirate crew from some isle of the sea, 
A murderous band as e’er could be, 

With a shadowy sail, and a flag of night, 
That flaunted and flew in heaven’s sight, 
Swept in the wake of the lovers there, 

And sank the ship and its freight so fair 
In the Baie des Chaleurs. 

Strange is the tale that the fishermen tell, — 
They say that a ball of fire fell 
Straight from the sky, with crash and roar, 
Lighting the bay from shore to shore; 

That the ship with a shudder and a groan, 
Sank through the waves to the caverns lone 
Of the Baie des Chaleurs. 

That was the last of the pirate crew, 

But many a night a black flag flew 
From the mast of a spectre vessel, sailed 
By a spectre band that wept and wailed, 


Pliantom Light of the Bate des Chaleurs 105 

For the wreck they had wrought on the sea and 
the land. 

For the innocent blood they had spilt on the sand 
Of the Baie des Chaleurs. 

This is the tale of the phantom light, 

That fills the mariner’s heart at night, 

With dread as it gleams o’er his path on the bay, 
Now by the shore, then far away, 

Fierce as the flame in sunset skies. 

Cold as the winter moon that lies 
On the Baie des Chaleurs. 



THE ROLL-CALL OF THE REEF 
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch 

“ Yes,, sir,” said my host the quarryman, reach- 
ing down the relics from their hook in the wall over 
the chimneypiece; “they’ve hung there all my 
time, and most of my father’s. The women won’t 
touch ’em; they’re afraid of the story. So here 
they’ll dangle, and gather dust and smoke, till an- 
other tenant comes and tosses ’em out o’ doors for 
rubbish. Whew ! ’tis coarse weather.” 

He went to the door, opened it, and stood study- 
ing the gale that beat upon his cottage-front, 
straight from the Manacle Reef. The rain drove 
106 


107 


The Boll-Call of the Beef 

past him into the kitchen aslant like threads of gold 
silk in the shine of the wreckwood fire. Meanwhile 
by the same firelight I examined the relics on my 
knee. The metal of each one was tarnished out of 
knowledge. But the trumpet was evidently an old 
cavalry trumpet, and the threads of its parti-col- 
ored sling, though frayed and dusty, still hung to- 
gether. Around the side-drum, beneath its cracked 
brown varnish, I could hardly trace a royal coat-of- 
armsand a legend running, Per Mare per Ter ram — 
the motto of the Marines. Its parchment, though 
colored and scented with wood-smoke, was limp and 
mildewed; and I began to tighten up the straps — 
under which the drumsticks had been loosely thrust 
— with the idle purpose of trying if some music 
might be got out of the old drum yet. 

But as I turned it on my knee, I found the drum 
attached to the trumpet-sling by a curious barrel- 
shaped padlock, and paused to examine this. The 
body of the lock was composed of half a dozen brass 
rings, set accurately edge to edge; and, rubbing the 
brass with my thumb, I saw that each of the six had 
a series of letters engraved around it. 

I knew the trick of it, I thought. Here was one 
of those word padlocks, once so common; only to 
be opened by getting the rings to spell a certain 
word, which the dealer confides to you. 


108 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

My host shut and barred the door, and came back 
to the hearth. 

“ ’Twas just such a wind — east by south — that 
brought in what you've got between your hands. 
Back in the year 'nine it was; my father has told 
me the tale a score o’ times. You’re twisting round 
the rings, I see. But you'll never guess the word. 
Parson Kendall, he made the word, and knocked 
down a couple o’ ghosts in their graves with it; and 
when his time came, he went to his own grave and 
took the word with him.” 

“ Whose ghosts, Matthew? ” 

“ You want the story, I see, sir. My father 
could tell it better than I can. He was a young 
man in the year 'nine, unmarried at the time, and 
living in this very cottage just as I be. That’s how 
he came to get mixed up with the tale.” 

He took a chair, lit a short pipe, and unfolded 
the story in a low, musing voice, with his eyes fixed 
on the dancing violet flames. 

“Yes, he'd ha' been about thirty year old in 
January of the year ’nine. The storm got up in 
the night o’ the twenty-first o’ that month. My 
father was dressed and out long before daylight; 
he never was one to ’bide in bed, let be that the gale 
by this time was pretty near lifting the thatch over 
his head. Besides which, he’d fenced a small ’taty- 


109 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 

patch that winter, down by Lowland Point, and he 
wanted to see if it stood the night’s work. He took 
the path across Gunner’s Meadow — where they 
buried most of the bodies afterward. The wind 
was right in his teeth at the time, and once on the 
way (he’s told me this often) a great strip of ore- 
weed came flying through the darkness and fetched 
him a slap on the cheek like a cold hand. But he 
made shift pretty well till he got to Lowland, and 
then had to drop upon his hands and knees and 
crawl, digging his fingers every now and then into 
the shingle to hold on, for he declared to me that the 
stones, some of them as big as a man’s head, kept 
rolling and driving past till it seemed the whole 
foreshore was moving westward under him. The 
fence was gone, of course; not a stick left to show 
where it stood; so that, when first he came to the 
place, he thought he must have missed his bearings. 
My father, sir, was a very religious man; and if he 
reckoned the end of the world was at hand — there 
in the great wind and night, among the moving 
stones — you may believe he was certain of it when 
he heard a gun fired, and, with the same, saw a 
flame shoot up out of the darkness to windward, 
making a sudden fierce light in all the place about. 
All he could find to think or say was, ‘ The Second 
Coming — The Second Coming! The Bridegroom 


110 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

cometh, and the wicked He will toss like a ball into 
a large country ! ’ and being already upon his knees, 
he just bowed his head and ’bided, saying this over 
and over. 

“ But by’m-by, between two squalls, he made 
bold to lift his head and look, and then by the light 
— a bluish color ’twas — he saw all the coast clear 
away to Manacle Point, and off the Manacles, in 
the thick of the weather, a sloop-of-war with top- 
gallants housed, driving stern foremost toward the 
reef. It was she, of course, that was burning the 
flare. My father could see the white streak and the 
ports of her quite plain as she rose to it, a little out- 
side the breakers, and he guessed easy enough that 
her captain had just managed to wear ship, and was 
trying to force her nose to the sea with the help of 
her small bower anchor and the scrap or two of 
canvas that hadn’t yet been blown out of her. But 
while he looked, she fell off, giving her broadside to 
it foot by foot, and drifting back on the breakers 
around Carn du and the Varses. The rocks lie so 
thick thereabouts, that ’twas a toss up which she 
struck first; at any rate, my father couldn’t tell at 
the time, for just then the flare died down and went 
out. 

“ Well, sir, he turned then in the dark and started 
back for Coverack to cry the dismal tidings — 


Ill 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 

though well knowing ship and crew to be past any 
hope; and as he turned, the wind lifted him and 
tossed him forward ‘ like a ball/ as he’d been say- 
ing, and homeward along the foreshore. As you 
know, ’tis ugly work, even by daylight, picking 
your way among the stones there, and my father 
was prettily knocked about at first in the dark. 
But by this ’twas nearer seven than six o’clock, and 
the day spreading. By the time he reached North 
Corner, a man could see to read print ; hows’ever he 
looked neither to sea nor toward Coverack, but 
headed straight for the first cottage — the same that 
stands above North Corner to-day. A man named 
Billy Ede lived there then, and when my father 
burst into the cottage bawling, ‘Wreck! wreck!’ 
he saw Billy Ede’s wife, Ann, standing there in her 
clogs, with a shawl over her head, and her clothes 
wringing wet. 

“ ‘ Save the chap! ’ says Billy Ede’s wife, Ann. 
‘What d’ ’ee mean by crying stale fish at that 
rate? * 

“ ‘ But ’tis a wreck, I tell ’ee. I’ve a-zeed’n! ’ 

“ ‘ Why, so ’tis,’ says she, ‘ and I’ve a-zeed’n, too; 
and so has every one with an eye in his head.’ 

“And with that she pointed straight over my fa- 
ther’s shoulder, and he turned; and there, close 
under Dolor Point, at the end of Coverack town, he 


112 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

saw another wreck washing, and the Point black 
with people, like emmets, running to and fro in the 
morning light. While he stood staring at her, he 
heard a trumpet sounded on board, the notes com- 
ing in little jerks, like a bird rising against the 
wind; but faintly, of course, because of the distance 
and the gale blowing — though this had dropped a 
little. 

“ ‘ She’s a transport,’ said Bilty Ede’s wife, Ann, 
‘ and full of horse soldiers, fine long men. When 
she struck they must ha’ pitched the hosses over 
first to lighten the ship, for a score of dead hosses 
had washed in afore I left, half an hour back. An’ 
three or four soldiers, too — fine long corpses in 
white breeches and jackets of blue and gold. I 
held the lantern to one. Such a straight young 
man.’ 

“ My father asked her about the trumpeting. 

“ 4 That’s the queerest bit of all. She was burnin’ 
a light when me an’ my man joined the crowd down 
there. All her masts had gone ; whether they were 
carried away, or were cut away to ease her, I don’t 
rightly know. Anyway, there she lay ’pon the 
rocks with her decks bare. Her keelson was broke 
under her and her bottom sagged and stove, and she 
had just settled down like a sitting hen — just the 
leastest list to starboard; but a man could stand 


113 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 

there easy. They had rigged up ropes across her, 
from bulwark to bulwark, an’ beside these the men 
were mustered, holding on like grim death when- 
ever the sea made a clean breach over them, an’ 
standing up like heroes as soon as it passed. The 
captain an’ the officers were clinging to the rail of 
the quarter-deck, all in their golden uniforms, wait- 
ing for the end as if ’twas King George they ex- 
pected. There was no way to help, for she lay 
right beyond cast of line, though our folk tried it 
fifty times. And beside them clung a trumpeter, 
a whacking big man, an’ between the heavy seas he 
would lift his trumpet with one hand, and blow a 
call ; and every time he blew the men gave a cheer. 
There (she says) — hark ’ee now — there he goes 
agen ! But you won’t hear no cheering any more, 
for few are left to cheer, and their voices weak. 
Bitter cold the wind is, and I reckon it numbs their 
grip o’ the ropes, for they were dropping off fast 
with every sea when my man sent me home to get 
his breakfast. Another wreck, you say? Well, 
there’s no hope for the tender dears, if ’tis the Man- 
acles. You’d better run down and help yonder; 
though ’tis little help that any man can give. Not 
one came in alive while I was there. The tide’s 
flowing, an’ she won’t hold together another hour* 
they say.’ 


114 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ Well, sure enough, the end was coming fast 
when my father got down to the Point. Six men 
had been cast up alive, or just breathing — a seaman 
and five troopers. The seaman was the only one 
that had breath to speak; and while they were car- 
rying him into the town, the word went round that 
the ship’s name was the Despatch , transport, home- 
ward bound from Corunna with a detachment of 
the 7th Hussars, that had been fighting out 
there with Sir John Moore. The seas had rolled 
her farther over by this time, and given her decks a 
pretty sharp slope; but a dozen men still held on, 
seven by the ropes near the ship’s waist, a couple 
near the break of the poop, and three on the quar- 
ter-deck. Of these three my father made out one 
to be the skipper; close by him clung an officer in 
full regimentals — his name, they heard after, was 
Captain Duncanfield; and last came the tall trum- 
peter; and if you’ll believe me, the fellow was mak- 
ing shift there, at the very last, to blow ' God Save 
the King ’ What’s more, he got to ‘ Send us vic- 
torious’ before an extra big sea came bursting 
across and washed them off the deck — every man 
but one of the pair beneath the poop — and he 
dropped his hold before the next wave; being 
stunned, I reckon. The others went out of sight at 
once, but the trumpeter — being, as I said, a power- 


115 


The Boll-Call of the Beef 

ful man as well as a tough swimmer — rose like a 
duck, rode out a couple of breakers, and came in on 
the crest of the third. The folks looked to see him 
broke like an egg at their feet; but when the 
smother cleared, there he was, lying face downward 
on a ledge below them; and one of the men that 
happened to have a rope round him — I forget the 
fellow’s name, if I ever heard it — jumped down and 
grabbed him by the ankle as he began to slip back. 
Before the next big sea, the pair were hauled high 
enough to be out of harm, and another heave 
brought them up to grass. Quick work; but mas- 
ter trumpeter wasn’t quite dead; nothing worse 
than a cracked head and three staved ribs. In 
twenty minutes or so they had him in bed, with the 
doctor to tend him. 

“ Now was the time — nothing being left alive 
upon the transport — for my father to tell of the 
sloop he’d seen driving upon the Manacles. And 
when he got a hearing, though the most were set 
upon salvage, and believed a wreck in the hand, so 
to say, to be worth half a dozen they couldn’t see, a 
good few volunteered to start off with him and have 
a look. They crossed Lowland Point; no ship to 
be seen on the Manacles, nor anywhere upon the 
sea. One or two was for calling my father a liar. 
‘ Wait till we come to Dean Point,’ said he. Sure 


116 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

enough, on the far side of Dean Point, they found 
the sloop’s mainmast washing about with half a 
dozen men lashed to it — men in red jackets — every 
mother’s son drowned and staring; and a little 
farther on, just under the Dean, three or four 
bodies cast up on the shore, one of them a small 
drummer-boy, side-drum and all ; and, near by, part 
of a ship’s gig, with ‘ H. M. S. Primrose 3 cut on 
the stern-board. From this point on, the shore was 
littered thick with wreckage and dead bodies — the 
most of them marines in uniform; and in Godrevy 
Cove in particular, a heap of furniture from the 
captain’s cabin, and among it a water-tight box, not 
much damaged, and full of papers, by which, when 
it came to be examined next day, the wreck was 
easily made out to be the Primrose of eighteen 
guns, outward bound from Portsmouth, with a fleet 
of transports for the Spanish War, thirty sail, I’ve 
heard, but I’ve never heard what became of them. 
Being handled by merchant skippers, no doubt they 
rode out the gale and reached the Tagus safe and 
sound. Not but what the captain of the Primrose 
(Mein was his name) did quite right to try and 
club-haul his vessel when he found himself under 
the land; only he never ought to have got there 
if he took proper soundings. But it’s easy talk- 
ing. 


117 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 

“ The Primrose , sir, was a handsome vessel — for 
her size, one of the handsomest in the King’s service 
— and newly fitted out at Plymouth Dock. So the 
boys had brave pickings from her in the way of 
brass-work, ship’s instruments, and the like, let 
alone some barrels of stores not much spoiled. 
They loaded themselves with as much as they could 
carry, and started for home, meaning to make a 
second journey before the preventive men got wind 
of their doings and came to spoil the fun. But as 
my father was passing back under the Dean, he 
happened to take a look over his shoulder at the 
bodies there. ‘ Hullo,’ says he, and dropped his 
gear, ‘ I do believe there’s a leg moving!’ And, 
running fore, he stooped over the small drummer- 
boy that I told you about. The poor little chap 
was lying there, with his face a mass of bruises and 
his eyes closed; but he had shifted one leg an inch 
or two, and was still breathing. So my father 
pulled out a knife and cut him free from his drum 
— that was lashed on to him with a double turn of 
manila rope — and took him up and carried him 
along here, to this very room we’re sitting in. He 
lost a good deal by this, for when he went back to 
fetch his bundle the preventive men had got hold 
of it, and were thick as thieves along the foreshore; 
so that ’twas only by paying one or two to look the 


118 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

other way that he picked up anything worth carry- 
ing off; which you’ll allow to be hard, seeing that 
he was the first man to give news of the wreck. 

“ Well, the inquiry was held, of course, and my 
father gave evidence, and for the rest they had to 
trust to the sloop’s papers, for not a soul was saved 
besides the drummer-boy, and he was raving in a 
fever, brought on by the cold and the fright. And 
the seamen and the five troopers gave evidence 
about the loss of the Despatch . The tall trumpeter, 
too, whose ribs were healing, came forward and 
kissed the book; but somehow his head had been 
hurt in coming ashore, and he talked foolish-like, 
and ’twas easy seen he would never be a proper man 
again. The others were taken up to Plymouth, and 
so went their ways ; but the trumpeter stayed on in 
Coverack; and King George, finding he was fit for 
nothing, sent him down a trifle of a pension after 
a while — enough to keep him in board and lodging, 
with a bit of tobacco over. 

“ Now the first time that this man — William 
Tallifer, he called himself — met with the drummer- 
boy, was about a fortnight after the little chap had 
bettered enough to be allowed a short walk out of 
doors, which he took, if you please, in full regi- 
mentals. There never was a soldier so proud of his 
dress. His own suit had shrunk a brave bit with! 


119 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 

the salt water; but into ordinary frock an’ cordu- 
roys he declared he would not get — not if he had to 
go naked the rest of his life; so my father, being a 
good-natured man and handy with the needle, 
turned to and repaired damages with a piece or two 
of scarlet cloth cut from the jacket of one of the 
drowned Marines. Well, the poor little chap 
chanced to be standing, in this rig-out, down by the 
gate of Gunner’s Meadow, where they had buried 
twoscore and over of his comrades. The morning 
was a fine one, early in March month; and along 
came the cracked trumpeter, likewise taking a 
stroll. 

44 4 Hullo! ’ says he; 4 good-mornin’ ! And what 
might you be doin’ here? ’ 

44 4 1 was a-wishin’,’ says the boy, 4 1 had a pair o’ 
drumsticks. Our lads were buried yonder without 
so much as a drum tapped or a musket fired; and 
that’s not Christian burial for British soldiers.’ 

44 4 Phut ! 5 says the trumpeter, and spat on the 
ground ; 4 a parcel of Marines ! ’ 

44 The boy eyed him a second or so, and answered 
up: 4 If I’d a tab of turf handy, I’d bung it at your 
mouth, you greasy cavalryman, and learn you to 
speak respectful of your betters. The Marines are 
the handiest body of men in the service.’ 

44 The trumpeter looked down on him from the 


120 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

height of six feet two, and asked: ‘Did they die 
well? ’ 

“ ‘ They died very well. There was a lot of run- 
ning to and fro at first, and some of the men began 
to cry, and a few to strip off their clothes. But 
when the ship fell off for the last time, Captain 
Mein turned and said something to Major Griffiths, 
the commanding officer on board, and the Major 
called out to me to beat to quarters. It might have 
been for a wedding, he sang it out so cheerful. We’d 
had word already that ’twas to be parade order, 
and the men fell in as trim and decent as if they 
were going to church. One or two even tried to 
shave at the last moment. The Major wore his 
medals. One of the seamen, seeing that I had hard 
work to keep the drum steady — the sling being a 
bit loose for me and the wind what you remember 
— lashed it tight with a piece of rope; and that 
saved my life afterward, a drum being as good as a 
cork until it’s stove. I kept beating away until 
every man was on deck; and then the Major formed 
them up and told them to die like British soldiers, 
and the chaplain read a prayer or two — the boys 
standin’ all the while like rocks, each man’s courage 
keeping up the other’s. The chaplain was in the mid- 
dle of a prayer when she struck. In ten minutes she 
was gone. That was how they died, cavalryman/ 


121 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 

“ * And that was very well done, drummer of the 
Marines. What's your name? ’ 

“ * John Christian.’ 

“ * Mine’s William George Tallifer, trumpeter, 
of the 7th Light Dragoons — the Queen’s Own. I 
played ‘God Save the King 3 while our men were 
drowning. Captain Duncanfield told me to sound 
a call or two, to put them in heart; but that matter 
of ' God Save the King 3 was a notion of my own. 
I won’t say anything to hurt the feelings of a Ma- 
rine, even if he’s not much over five foot tall; but 
the Queen’s Own Hussars is a tearin’ fine regiment. 
As between horse and foot ’tis a question o’ which 
gets the chance. All the way from Sahagun to 
Corunna ’twas we that took and gave the knocks — 
at Mayorga and Rueda and Benny venty.’ (The 
reason, sir, I can speak the names so pat is that my 
father learnt ’em by heart afterward from the 
trumpeter, who was always talking about Mayorga 
and Rueda and Benny venty.) ‘We made the 
rear-guard, under General Paget, and drove the 
French every time; and all the infantry did was to 
sit about in wine-shops till we whipped ’em out, an’ 
steal an’ straggle an’ play the tom-fool in general. 
And when it came to a stand-up fight at Corunna, 
’twas we that had to stay seasick aboard the trans- 
ports, an’ watch the infantry in the thick o’ the 


122 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

caper. Very well they behaved, too; ’specially the 
4th Regiment, an’ the 42d Highlanders, an’ the 
Dirty Half Hundred. Oh, ay ; they’re decent regi- 
ments, all three. But the Queen’s Own Hussars is 
a tearin’ fine regiment. So you played on your 
drum when the ship was goin’ down? Drummer 
John Christian, I’ll have to get you a new pair o’ 
drumsticks for that.’ 

“ Well, sir, it appears that the very next day the 
trumpeter marched into Helston, and got a carpen- 
ter there to turn him a pair of box-wood drumsticks 
for the boy. And this was the beginning of one 
of the most curious friendships you ever heard tell 
of. Nothing delighted the pair more than to bor- 
row a boat of my father and pull out to the rocks 
where the Primrose and the Despatch had struck 
and sunk; and on still days ’twas pretty to hear 
them out there off the Manacles, the drummer play- 
ing his tattoo — for they always took their music 
with them — and the trumpeter practising calls, and 
making his trumpet speak like an angel. But if 
the weather turned roughish, they’d be walking to- 
gether and talking; leastwise, the youngster lis- 
tened while the other discoursed about Sir John’s 
campaign in Spain and Portugal, telling how each 
little skirmish befell; and of Sir John himself, and 
General Baird and General Paget, and Colonel 


128 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 

Vivian, his own commanding officer, and what kind 
men they were; and of the last bloody stand-up at 
Corunna, and so forth, as if neither could have 
enough. 

4 4 But all this had to come to an end in the late 
summer, for the boy, John Christian, being now 
well and strong again, must go up to Plymouth to 
report himself. ’Twas his own wish (for I believe 
King George had forgotten all about him), but his 
friend wouldn’t hold him back. As for the trum- 
peter, my father had made an arrangement to take 
him on as a lodger as soon as the boy left; and on 
the morning fixed for the start he was up at the 
door here by five o’clock; with his trumpet slung 
by his side, and all the rest of his belongings in a 
small valise. A Monday morning it was, and after 
breakfast he had fixed to walk with the boy some 
way on the road toward Helston, where the coach 
started. My father left them at breakfast together, 
and went out to meat the pig, and do a few odd 
morning jobs of that sort. When he came back, the 
boy was still at table, and the trumpeter standing 
here by the chimney-place with the drum and trum- 
pet in his hands, hitched together just as they be 
at this moment. 

“ 6 Look at this,’ he says to my father, showing 
him the lock; 4 1 picked it up off a starving brass- 


124 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

worker in Lisbon, and it is not one of your common 
locks that one word of six letters will open at any 
time. There’s janius in this lock; for you’ve only 
to make the ring spell any six-letter word you 
please, and snap down the lock upon that, and never 
a soul can open it — not the maker, even — until 
somebody comes along that knows the word you 
snapped it on. Now, Johnny here’s goin’, and he 
leaves his drum behind him; for, though he can 
make pretty music on it, the parchment sags in 
wet weather, by reason of the sea-water getting 
at it; an’ if he carries it to Plymouth, they’ll only 
condemn it and give him another. And as for me, 
I shan’t have the heart to put lip to the trumpet any 
more when Johnny’s gene. So we’ve chosen a word 
together, and locked ’em together upon that; and, 
by your leave, I’ll hang ’em here together on the 
hook over your fireplace. Maybe Johnny’ll come 
back ; maybe not. Maybe, if he comes, I’ll be dead 
and gone, an’ he’ll take ’em apart an’ try their music 
for old sake’s sake. But if he never comes, nobody 
can separate ’em; for nobody besides knows the 
word. And if you marry and have sons, you can 
tell ’em that here are tied together the souls of 
Johnny Christian, drummer, of the Marines, and 
William George Tallifer, once trumpeter of the 
Queen’s Own Hussars. Amen.’ 


125 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 

“ With that he hung the two instruments ’pon the 
hook there; and the boy stood up and thanked my 
father and shook hands; and the pair went forth 
of the door, toward Helston. 

“ Somewhere on the road they took leave of one 
another; but nobody saw the parting, nor heard 
what was said between them. About three in the 
afternoon the trumpeter came walking back over 
the hill; and by the time my father came home from 
the fishing, the cottage was tidied up and the tea 
ready, and the whole place shining like a new pin. 
From that time for five years he lodged here with 
my father, looking after the house and tilling the 
garden; and all the while he was steadily failing, 
the hurt in his head spreading, in a manner, to his 
limbs. My father watched the feebleness growing 
on him, but said nothing. And from first to last 
neither spake a word about the drummer, John 
Christian ; nor did any letter reach them, nor word 
of his doings. 

“ The rest of the tale you’re free to believe, sir, 
or not, as you please. It stands upon my father’s 
words, and he always declared he was ready to kiss 
the Book upon it before judge and jury. He said, 
too, that he never had the wit to make up such a 
yarn; and he defied any one to explain about the 


126 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

lock, in particular, by any other tale. But you shall 
judge for yourself. 

“ My father said that about three o’clock in the 
morning, April fourteenth of the year ’fourteen, he 
and William Tallifer were sitting here, just as you 
and I, sir, are sitting now. My father had put on 
his clothes a few minutes before, and was mending 
his spiller by the light of the horn lantern, meaning 
to set off before daylight to haul the trammel. The 
trumpeter hadn’t been to bed at all. Toward the 
last he mostly spent his nights (and his days, too) 
dozing in the elbow-chair where you sit at this min- 
ute. He was dozing then (my father said), with 
his chin dropped forward on his chest, when a knock 
sounded upon the door, and the door opened, and 
in walked an upright young man in scarlet regi- 
mentals. 

“ He had grown a brave bit, and his face was the 
color of wood-ashes; but it was the drummer, John 
Christian. Only his uniform was different from the 
one he used to wear, and the figures 4 38 ’ shone in 
brass upon his collar. 

44 The drummer walked past my father as if he 
never saw him, and stood by the elbow-chair and 
said: 

44 4 Trumpeter, trumpeter, are you one with me? ’ 


127 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 

“ And the trumpeter just lifted the lids of his 
eyes and answered, ‘ How should I not be one with 
you, drummer Johnny — Johnny boy? The men 
are patient. Till you come, I count; you march, I 
mark time until the discharge comes.’ 

“ ‘ The discharge has come to-night,’ said the 
drummer, ‘and the word is Corunna no longer;’ 
and stepping to the chimney-place, he unhooked the 
drum and trumpet, and began to twist the brass 
rings of the lock, spelling the word aloud, so — 
C-O-R-U-N-A. When he had fixed the last letter, 
the padlock opened in his hand. 

“ ‘ Did you know, trumpeter, that when I came 
to Plymouth they put me into a line regiment? ’ 

“ ‘ The 38th is a good regiment,’ answered the old 
Hussar, still in his dull voice. ‘ I went back with 
them from Sahagun to Corunna. At Corunna 
they stood in General Fraser’s division, on the 
right. They behaved well.’ 

“ ‘ But I’d fain see the Marines again,’ says the 
drummer, handing him the trumpet, ‘ and you — 
you shall call once more for the Queen’s Own. 
Matthew,’ he says, suddenly, turning on my father 
— and when he turned, my father saw for the first 
time that his scarlet jacket had a round hole by the 
breast-bone, and that the blood was welling there — 
‘ Matthew, we shall want your boat.’ 


128 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ Then my father rose on his legs like a man in a 
dream, while they two slung on, the one his drum, 
and t’other his trumpet. He took the lantern, and 
went quaking before them down to the shore, and 
they breathed heavily behind him ; and they stepped 
into his boat, and my father pushed off. 

“ 4 Row you first for Dolor Point,’ says the 
drummer. So my father rowed them out past the 
white houses of Coverack to Dolor Point, and there, 
at a word, lay on his oars. And the trumpeter, 
William Tallifer, put his trumpet to his mouth and 
sounded the Revelly . The music of it was like 
rivers running. 

44 4 They will follow,’ said the drummer. 4 Mat- 
thew, pull you now for the Manacles.’ 

44 So my father pulled for the Manacles, and 
came to an easy close outside Carn du. And the 
drummer took his sticks and beat a tattoo, there by 
the edge of the reef ; and the music of it was like a 
rolling chariot. 

44 4 That will do,’ says he, breaking off ; 4 they will 
follow. Pull now for the shore under Gunner’s 
Meadow.’ 

44 Then my father pulled for the shore, and ran 
his boat in under Gunner’s Meadow. And they 
stepped out, all three, and walked up to the 
meadow. By the gate the drummer halted and 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 129 

began his tattoo again, looking out toward the dark- 
ness over the sea. 

“ And while the drum beat, and my father held 
his breath, there came up out of the sea and the 
darkness a troop of many men, horse and foot, and 
formed up among the graves; and others rose out 
of the graves and formed up — drowned Marines 
with bleached faces, and pale Hussars riding their 
horses, all lean and shadowy. There was no clatter 
of hoofs or accoutrements, my father said, but a 
soft sound all the while, like the beating of a bird’s 
wing and a black shadow lying like a pool about the 
feet of all. The drummer stood upon a little knoll 
just inside the gate, and beside him the tall trum- 
peter, with hand on hip, watching them gather; and 
behind them both my father, clinging to the gate. 
When no more came the drummer stopped playing, 
and said, ‘ Call the roll.’ 

“ Then the trumpeter stepped toward the end 
man of the rank and called, 4 Troop- Sergeant- 
Major Thomas Irons,’ and the man in a thin voice 
answered, ‘ Here! ’ 

“ ‘ Troop-Sergeant-Major Thomas Irons, how is 
it with you? 5 

“ The man answered, 4 How should it be with 
me? When I was young, I betrayed a girl; and 
when I was grown, I betrayed a friend, and for 


130 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

these things I must pay. But I died as a man 
ought. God save the King! ’ 

44 The trumpeter called to the next man, 

4 Trooper Henry Buckingham,’ and the next man 
answered, 4 Here! ’ 

44 4 Trooper Henry Buckingham, how is it with 
you? ’ 

44 4 How should it be with me? I was a drunkard, 
and I stole, and in Lugo, in a wine-shop, I knifed a 
man. But I died as a man should. God save the 
King! ’ 

44 So the trumpeter went down the line; and when 
he had finished, the drummer took it up, hailing the 
dead Marines in their order. Each man answered 
to his name, and each man ended with 4 God save 
the King! ’ When all were hailed, the drummer 
stepped back to his mound, and called: 

44 4 It is well. You are content, and we are con- 
tent to join you. Wait yet a little while.’ 

44 With this he turned and ordered my father 
to pick up the lantern, and lead the way back. 
As my father picked it up, he heard the ranks of 
dead men cheer and call, 4 God save the King!’ 
all together, and saw them waver and fade 
back into the dark, like a breath fading off a 
pane. 

44 But when they came back here to the kitchen, 


131 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 

and my father set the lantern down, it seemed 
they’d both forgot about him. For the drummer 
turned in the lantern-light — and my father could 
see the blood still welling out of the hole in his 
breast — and took the trumpet-sling from around 
the other’s neck, and locked drum and trumpet to- 
gether again, choosing the letters on the lock very 
carefully. While he did this he said: 

“ ‘ The word is no more Corunna, but Bayonne. 
As you left out an “ n ” in Corunna, so must I 
leave out an “ n ” in Bayonne.’ And before snap- 
ping the padlock, he spelt out the word slowly — 
‘ B-A-Y-O-N-E.’ After that, he used no more 
speech; but turned and hung the two instruments 
back on the hook; and then took the trumpeter by 
the arm ; and the pair walked out into the darkness, 
glancing neither to right nor left. 

“ My father was on the point of following, when 
he heard a sort of sigh behind him; and there, sit- 
ting in the elbow-chair, was the very trumpeter he 
had just seen walk out by the door! If my father’s 
heart jumped before, you may believe it jumped 
quicker now. But after a bit, he went up to the 
man asleep in the chair, and put a hand upon him. 
It was the trumpeter in flesh and blood that he 
touched; but though the flesh was warm, the trum- 
peter was dead. 


132 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ Well, sir, they buried him three days after; 
and at first my father was minded to say nothing 
about his dream (as he thought it). But the day 
after the funeral, he met Parson Kendall coming 
from Helston market; and the parson called out: 
‘ Have ’ee heard the news the coach brought down 
this mornin , ? , ‘What news?’ says my father. 
‘ Why, that peace is agreed upon.’ ‘ None too 
soon,’ says my father. ‘ Not soon enough for our 
poor lads at Bayonne, 5 the parson answered. 
‘ Bayonne ! 5 cries my father with a jump. ‘ Why, 
yes 5 ; and the parson told him all about a great 
sally the French had made on the night of April 
13th. ‘ Do you happen to know if the 38th regi- 
ment was engaged? 5 my father asked. ‘ Come 
now, 5 said Parson Kendall, ‘ I didn’t know you was 
so well up in the campaign. But, as it happens, I 
do know that the 38th was engaged, for ’twas they 
that held a cottage and stopped the French ad- 
vance. 5 

“ Still my father held his tongue; and when, a 
week later, he walked into Helston and bought a 
‘ Mercury 5 off the Sherborne rider, and got the 
landlord of the Angel to spell out the list of killed 
and wounded, sure enough, there among the killed 
was Drummer John Christian, of the 38th Foot. 

“ After this there was nothing for a religious man 


133 


The Roll-Call of the Reef 

but to make a clean breast. So my father went up 
to Parson Kendall and told the whole story. The 
parson listened, and put a question or two, and then 
asked: 

“ 4 Have you tried to open the lock since that 
night? 5 

“ 4 I ha’n’t dared to touch it,’ says my father. 

“ 4 Then come along and try.’ When the parson 
came to the cottage here, he took the things off the 
hook and tried the lock. 4 Did he say 44 Bayonne ”? 
The word has seven letters.’ 

44 4 Not if you spell it with one 44 n ” as he did,’ 
says my father. 

44 The parson spelt it out — B-A-Y-O-N-E. 
4 Whew! ’ says he, for the lock had fallen open in 
his hand. 

44 He stood considering it a moment, and then he 
says, 4 1 tell you what. I shouldn’t blab this all 
round the parish, if I was you. You won’t get no 
credit for truth-telling, and a miracle’s wasted on 
a set of fools. But if you like, I’ll shut down the 
lock again upon a holy word that no one but me 
shall know, and neither drummer nor trumpeter, 
dead or alive, shall frighten the secret out of me.’ 

44 4 1 wish to gracious you would, parson,’ said 
my father. 

44 The parson chose the holy word there and then. 


134 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

and shut the lock back upon it, and hung the drum 
and trumpet back in their place. He is gone long 
since, taking the word with him. And till the lock 
is broken by force, nobody will ever separate those 
twain.” 



IPSWICH BAR 

Esther and Brainard Bates 

The mist lay still on Heartbreak Hill, 
The sea was cold below, 

The waves rolled up and, one by one, 
Broke heavily and slow; 


And through the clouds the gray gulls fled, 
The gannets whistled past, 

Across the dunes the wailing loons 
Hid from the rising blast. 

135 


136 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 


The moaning wind, that all day long 
Had haunted marsh and lea, 

Went mad by night, and, beating round, 
Fled shrieking out to sea. 


The crested waves turned gray to white, 
That tossed the drifting spar, 

But far more bright the yellow light 
That gleamed on Ipswich Bar. 

Old Harry Main, wild Harry Main, 
Upon the shifting sand 
Had built a flaming beacon-light 
To lure the ships to land. 

“ The storm breaks out and far to-night, — 
They seek a port to bide; 

God rest ye, sirs, on Ipswich Bar 
Your ships shall surely ride. 


“ They see my fires, my dancing fires, 
They lay their courses down, 

And ill betide the mariners 
That make for Ipswich town! 


Ipswich Bar 


137 


“ For mine the wreck, and mine the gold, — 
With none to lay the blame, — 

So hold ye down to-night, good sirs, 

And I will feed the flame! ” 


Oh, dark the night and wild the gale! 

The skipper hither turned 
To where, afar, on Ipswich Bar, 

The treacherous beacon burned; 


With singing shrouds and snapping sheets 
The vessel swiftly bore 
And headed for the guiding lights 
Which shone along the shore. 


The shoaling waters told no tale, 
The tempest made no sign, 

Till full before her plunging bows 
Flashed out a whitened line; 


She struck, — she heeled, — the parting stays 
Went by with mast and spar, 

And then the wave and rain beat out 
The light on Ipswich Bar. 


138 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Gray dawn beneath the dying storm; 

A figure gaunt and thin 
Went splashing through the tangled sedge 
To drag the treasure in ; 


For when the darkness broke away, 
The lances of the moon 
Had shown him where lay, bow in air, 
A wrecking picaroon. 


What matter if the open day 
Bore witness to his shame? 

’Twas his the wreck and his the gold, 
And none had seen to blame. 


He did not know the eyes of men 
Were watching from afar, 

As Harry Main went back and forth 
The length of Ipswich Bar. 


They told the Ipswich fisher-folk, 

Who, all aghast and grim, 

Came running down through Pudding Lane 
In maddened search for him; 


Ipswich Bar 


189 


No word, — no blow, — no bitter jest, — 
They did not strike or mar, 

But short the shrift of Harry Main 
That day on Ipswich Bar. 

They marched him out at ebb of tide 
Where lay the shattered wreck, 

And bound him to the dripping rocks 
With chains about his neck; 


With chains about his guilty neck 
They left him to the wave — 
The lapping tide rose eagerly 
To hide the wrecker’s grave. 


And now, when sudden storms strike down 
With hoarse and threatening tones, 

Old Harry Main must rise again 
And gird his sea-wracked bones 


To coil a cable made of sand 
Which ever breaks in twain, 

While echoing through the salted marsh 
Is heard his clanking chain. 


140 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 


When rock and shoal are white with foam, 
The watchers on the sands 
Can see his ghostly form rise up 
And wring his fettered hands. 


And out at sea his cries are heard 
Above the storm, and far, 

Where, cold and still, old Heartbreak Hill 
Looks down on Ipswich Bar. 


A GREYPORT LEGEND 
Bret Harte 

They ran through the streets of the seaport town, 
They peered from the decks of the ships that lay; 
The cold sea-fog that came whitening down 
Was never as cold or white as they. 

“ Ho, Starbuck and Pinckney and Tenderden! 
Run for your shallops, gather your men, 
Scatter your boats on the lower bay.” 

Good cause for fear! In the thick mid-day 
The hulk that lay by the rotting pier, 

Filled with the children in happy play. 

Parted its moorings and drifted clear, 

Drifted clear beyond reach or call, — 

Thirteen children they were in all, — 

All adrift in the lower bay! 

Said a hard-faced skipper, “ God help us all! 

She will not float till the turning tide! ” 

Said his wife, “ My darling will hear my call, 
Whether in sea or heaven she bide; ” 

And she lifted a quavering voice and high, 
Wild and strange as a sea-bird’s cry, 

Till they shuddered and wondered at her 
side. 


141 


142 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

The fog drove down on each laboring crew, 

Veiled each from each and the sky and shore; 
There was not a sound but the breath they drew. 
And the lap of water and creak of oar ; 

And they felt the breath of the downs, fresh 
blown 

O’er leagues of clover and cold gray stone, 
But not from the lips that had gone 
before. 

They came no more. But they tell the tale 
That, when fogs are thick on the harbor reef, 

The mackerel fishers shorten sail — 

For the signal they know will bring relief ; 

For the voices of children, still at play 
In a phantom hulk that drifts alway 

Through channels whose waters never fail. 

It is but a foolish shipman’s tale, 

A theme for a poet’s idle page; 

But still, when the mists of Doubt prevail, 

And we lie becalmed by the shores of Age, 

We hear from the misty troubled shore 
The voice of the children gone before, 
Drawing the soul to its anchorage. 


THE LAKE OF THE DISMAL SWAMB 

Thomas Moore 

“ They made her a grave, too cold and damp 
For a soul so warm and true; 

And she’s gone to the Lake of the Dismal 
Swamp, 

Where, all night long, by a firefly lamp. 

She paddles her white canoe. 

“ And her firefly lamp I soon shall see, 

And her paddle I soon shall hear; 

Long and loving our life shall be, 

And I’ll hide the maid in a cypress-tree, 

When the footstep of death is near.” 

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds — 

His path was rugged and sore, 

Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds, 
Through many a fen, where the serpent feeds, 
And man never trod before. 

And, when on the earth he sunk to sleep, 

If slumber his eyelids knew, 

He lay, where the deadly vine doth weep 
Its venomous tear and nightly steep 
The flesh with blistering dew ! 

143 


144 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

And near him the she-wolf stirr’d the brake, 
And the copper-snake breath’d in his ear, 
Till he starting cried, from his dream awake, 
“ Oh! when shall I see the dusky Lake, 

And the white canoe of my dear? ” 

He saw the Lake, and a meteor bright 
Quick over its surface play’d — 

“ Welcome,” he said, “ my dear-one’s light! ” 
And the dim shore echoed, for many a night, 
The name of the death-cold maid. 

Till he hollow’d a boat of the birchen bark, 
Which carried him off from shore ; 

Far, far he follow’d the meteor spark, 

The wind was high and the clouds were dark, 
And the boat return’d no more. 

But oft, from the Indian hunter’s camp 
This lover and maid so true 
Are seen at the hour of midnight damp 
To cross the Lake by a firefly lamp, 

And paddle their white canoe ! 


THE THREE LOW MASSES 

A Christmas Tale 
Alphonse Daudet 

I 

“ Two truffled turkeys, Garrigou? ” 

“ Yes, father, two magnificent turkeys stuffed 
with truffles. I know something about it, for I my- 
self helped to stuff them. One would have said 
that the skin would burst when they were roasting, 
it was distended so.” 

“ Jesus-Maria! and I love turkeys so dearly. 
Give me my surplice quickly, Garrigou. And what 
else did you see in the kitchen besides the turkeys? ” 
“ Oh, all sorts of good things. Since noon, we 
have done nothing hut pluck pheasants, lapwings, 
pullets, chickens, and heath-cocks. Feathers flew 
in every direction. And then from the pond they 

brought eels, golden carp, trout, and ” 

“ How big are the trout, Garrigou? ” 

“ As big as that, father. Enormous! ” 

“ Mon Dieu! It seems to me that I see them. 
Did you put the wine in the cups? ” 

“ Yes, father, I put the wine in the cups. But 
145 


146 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

indeed! it is no such wine as you will drink before 
long, after the midnight mass. If you could just 
look into the dining-hall at the chateau, and see all 
those decanters, filled with wines of all colors. And 
the silver plate, the carved centrepieces, the flowers 
and the candelabra! Never again will such a 
reveillon 1 be seen. Monsieur the marquis has in- 
vited all the nobles of the neighborhood. There 
will be at least forty at the table, without counting 
the notary and the bailiff. Ah! you are very for- 
tunate to be one of them, father! Simply from 
smelling those fine turkeys, the odor of truffles fol- 
lows me everywhere. Meuh ! ” 

“ Come, come, my boy! Let us beware of the 
sin of gluttony, especially on the eve of the Nativ- 
ity. Go at once and light the candles, and ring the 
first bell for mass; for midnight is near at hand and 
we must not be late.” 

This conversation took place on Christmas night 
in the year of grace one thousand six hundred and 
something, between the Reverend Dom Balaguere, 
former prior of the Barnabites, and now stipendiary 
chaplain of the Lords of Trinquelage, and his little 
clerk Garrigou, or rather him whom he believed to 
be his little clerk Garrigou ; for you must know that 
the devil on that evening had assumed the round 

*A late supper; specifically, a Christmas-eve feast or revel. 


147 


The Three Low Masses 

face and insignificant features of the young sacris- 
tan, that he might the more easily lead the father 
into temptation and induce him to commit the 
frightful sin of gluttony. And so, while the pro* 
tended Garrigou (hum! hum!) made the bells of 
the seignorial chapel ring out lustily, the reverend 
father finished attiring himself in his chasuble, in 
the little sacristy of the chateau; and, with his mind 
already perturbed by all these gastronomic details, 
he repeated to himself as he dressed: 

“ Roast turkeys, golden carp, and trout as big 
as that! ” 

Without, the night wind blew, scattering abroad 
the music of the bells, and one after another lights 
appeared in the darkness on the sides of Mount 
Ventoux, on the summit of which rose the ancient 
towers of Trinquelage. They were the families of 
the farmers, coming to listen to the midnight mass 
at the chateau. They climbed the hill singing, in 
groups of five or six, the father ahead, lantern in 
hand, the women enveloped in their ample dark 
cloaks, in which the children huddled together and 
sheltered themselves from the sharp air. Despite 
the hour and the cold, all those people walked 
cheerily along, upheld by the thought that, after 
the mass, there would be a table laid for them in 
the kitchens, as there was every year. From time 


148 More Mystery Tales for 'Boys and Girls 

to time, on the steep slope, the carriage of a noble- 
man, preceded by torch-bearers, passed with its 
windows gleaming in the moonlight like mirrors ; or 
a mule trotted by, jingling his bells, and by the light 
of the mist-enveloped torches, the farmers recog- 
nized their bailiff and saluted him as he passed: 

“ Good evening, good evening, Master Arno- 
ton! ” 

“ Good evening, good evening, my children.” 

The night was clear, the stars glistered more 
brightly in the frosty air; the wind had a sting in 
it, and a fine hoarfrost, which clung to the garments 
without wetting them, maintained faithfully the 
traditions of Christmas white with snow. At the 
summit of the hill, the chateau appeared as their 
destination, with its enormous mass of towers and 
gables, the steeple of its chapel rising into the blue- 
black sky; and a multitude of little twinkling lights, 
going and coming, flickering at every window, re- 
sembled, against the dark background of the build- 
ing, sparks among the ashes of burnt paper. 

The drawbridge and postern passed, they were 
obliged, in order to reach the chapel, to go through 
the first courtyard, filled with carriages, servants, 
bearers of sedan-chairs, brilliantly lighted by the 
flame of the torches and the blaze from the kitchens. 
One could hear the grinding of the spits, the clat- 


The Three Low Masses 


149 


tering of the saucepans, the clink of the glasses and 
silverware, being moved about in preparation for 
the banquet, and over it all, a warm vapor, fragrant 
with the odor of roasting flesh and the pungent 
herbs of complicated sauces, led the farmers to say, 
with the chaplain and the bailiff and everybody 
else: 

“ What a fine reveillon we are going to have after 
mass ! ” 


II 

Ting a ling! ting a ling, a ling! 

That is the signal for the mass to begin. In the 
chapel of the chateau, a miniature cathedral with 
intersecting arches and oaken wainscoting reaching 
to the ceiling, the tapestries have been hung and all 
the candles lighted. And such a multitude! and 
such toilets ! First of all, seated in the carved pews 
which surround the choir, is the Sire de Trinque- 
lage, in a salmon-colored silk coat, and about him 
all the noble lords, his guests. Opposite, upon 
prie-dieus of silver, the old dowager marquise in her 
gown of flame-colored brocade has taken her place, 
and the young Dame de Trinquelage, with a lofty 
tower of lace upon her head, fluted according to the 
latest style at the French court. Lower down, clad 
in black, with enormous pointed wings and shaven 


150 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

faces, are seen Thomas Arnoton the bailiff and 
Master Ambroy the notary, two sober notes among 
those shimmering silks and figured damasks. Then 
came the stout majordomos, the pages, the hunts- 
men, the stewards, and Dame Barbe with all her 
keys hanging at her side upon a slender silver ring. 
In the background, on the benches, sit the lesser 
functionaries, the maidservants and the farmers 
with their families; and lastly, at the farther end, 
against the door, which they open and close with 
care, the scullions come between two sauces to ob- 
tain a whiff of the mass, and to bring an odor of 
reveillon into the church, which is all in festal array 
and warm with the flame of so many candles. 

Was it the sight of those little white caps which 
distracted the attention of the celebrant of the 
mass; was it not rather Garrigou’s bell, that frantic 
little bell jingling at the foot of the altar with in- 
fernal precipitation, which seemed to be saying all 
the time: 

“ Let us hurry, let us hurry. The sooner we 
have finished, the sooner we shall be at the table.” 

The fact is that every time that that devil’s own 
bell rang, the chaplain forgot the mass and thought 
only of the reveillon. He imagined the bustling 
cooks, the ovens beneath which a genuine forge fire 
was burning, the steam ascending from the open 


The Three Low Masses 


151 


saucepans, and, bathed in that steam, two superb 
stuffed turkeys, distended and mottled with truffles. 

Or else he saw long lines of pages pass, carrying 
dishes surrounded by tempting vapors, and entered 
with them the huge room already prepared for the 
feast. O joy! there was the enormous table all 
laden, and blazing with light; the peacocks with all 
their feathers, the pheasants flapping their golden 
wings, the ruby-colored decanters, the pyramids of 
fruit resplendent amid the green branches, and those 
marvelous fish of which Garrigou had told him (ah, 
yes ! Garrigou indeed !) lying upon a bed of fennel, 
their scales glittering as if they were fresh from 
the water, with a bunch of fragrant herbs in their 
monstrous nostrils. So vivid was the vision of those 
marvels, that it seemed to Dom Balaguere that all 
those wonderful dishes were actually before him on 
the borders of the altar-cloth; and two or three 
times, he surprised himself saying the Benedicite, 
instead of the Dominus vobiscum! Aside from 
these slight mistakes, the worthy man read the serv- 
ice most conscientiously, without skipping a line, 
without omitting a genuflexion; and everything 
went well until the end of the first mass; for you 
know that on Christmas day the same celebrant 
must say three masses in succession. 

“ One ! ” said the chaplain to himself, with a sigh 


152 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

of relief; then, without wasting a minute, he mo- 
tioned to his clerk, or to him whom he believed to 

be his clerk, and 

Ting a ling, a ling, a ling! ting a ling! 

The second mass had begun, and with it began 
also Dom Balaguere’s sin. 

“ Quick, quick, let us make haste! ” cried Garri- 
gou’s bell in its shrill little voice; and that time the 
unhappy celebrant, wholly given over to the demon 
of gluttony, rushed through the service and de- 
voured the pages with the avidity of his over-ex- 
cited appetite. In frenzied haste he stooped and 
rose, made the signs of the cross and the genuflex- 
ions, and abridged all the motions, in order to have 
done the sooner. He barely put out his arms in 
the Gospel, he barely struck his breast at the 
Confiteor. The clerk and he vied with each other 
to see which could gabble faster. Verses and re- 
sponses came rushing forth and tripped over one 
another. Words half pronounced, without open- 
ing the mouth, which would have taken too much 
time, ended in incomprehensible murmurs. 

" Or emus ps — ps — ps " 

“ Mea culpa — pa — pa " 

Like hurried vine-dressers, trampling the grapes 
into the vat, they both wallowed in the Latin of the 
mass, sending splashes in all directions. 


The Three Low Masses 


153 


" Dom — scum ! " said Balaguere. 

“ — Stutuo !” replied Garrigou; and all the time 
the infernal little bell jangled in their ears like the 
bells that are put on post-horses to make them gal- 
lop at the top of their speed. As you may imagine, 
at that rate a low mass is soon despatched. 

“Two!” said the chaplain, breathlessly; then, 
without taking time to breathe, flushed and perspir- 
ing, he ran down the steps of the altar, and 

Ting a ling, ling! ting a ling, ling! 

The third mass had begun. He had but a few 
more steps to go to reach the banquet hall; but, 
alas! as the reveillon drew nearer, the ill-fated 
Balaguere was seized with a frenzy of impatience 
and gluttony. His vision became more vivid, the 
golden carp, the roast turkeys were there before 
him; he touched them; he — O Heaven! the dishes 
smoked, the wines scented the air; and the little bell, 
frantically shaking its clapper, shouted to him: 

“ Quicker, quicker, still quicker! ” 

But how could he go any quicker? His lips 
barely moved. He no longer pronounced the 
words. He could only cheat the good Lord alto- 
gether and filch the mass from Him. And that is 
what he did, the villain; passing from temptation to 
temptation, he began by skipping one verse, then 
two ; then the Epistle was too long, and he did not 


1 54 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

finish it; he barely grazed the Gospel, passed the 
Credo without going in, jumped over the Pater, 
nodded to the Preface at a distance; and thus by 
leaps and bounds rushed into eternal damnation, 
still followed by the infamous Garrigou (get thee 
behind me, Satan!), who seconded him with won- 
derful alacrity, raised his chasuble, turned the 
leaves two by two, collided with the desks, over- 
turned the communion-cups, and all the time shook 
the little bell louder and louder, faster and faster. 

You should have seen the dismayed look on the 
faces of the whole congregation ! Obliged to fol- 
low by the pantomime of the priest the mass of 
which they did not hear a word, some rose while the 
others knelt, remained seated when the others were 
standing; and all the phases of that extraordinary 
service were confused upon the benches in a multi- 
tude of diversified attitudes. The Christmas star, 
traveling along the roads of the sky toward the 
little stable, turned pale with horror when it wit- 
nessed that confusion. 

“ The abbe goes too fast. N o one can follow 
him,” muttered the old dowager as she nodded her 
head-dress in bewilderment. 

Master Arnoton, his great steel spectacles on his 
nose, looked through his prayer-book, trying to find 
out where they might be. But in reality, all those 


The Three Low Masses 


1 55 


worthy folk, who also were thinking of the feast, 
were not sorry that the mass should travel at that 
lightning speed; and when Dom Balaguere, with 
radiant face, turned toward the congregation and 
shouted at the top of his voice: “ Ite missa est ” the 
whole chapel as with one voice responded with a 
“ Deo g ratios ” so joyous, so infectious, that they 
fancied themselves already at table honoring the 
first toast of the reveillon. 

Ill 

Five minutes later the throng of nobles was 
seated in the great banquet-hall, the chaplain 
among them. The chateau, illuminated from top 
to bottom, rang with songs and shouts, and laughter 
and tumult; and the venerable Dom Balaguere 
planted his fork in the wing of a chicken, drowning 
his remorse for his sin in floods of the Pope’s wine 
and in toothsome sauces. He ate and drank so 
much, the poor holy man, that he died during the 
night of a terrible attack, without even time to re- 
pent; then in the morning he arrived in heaven, 
which was still all astir with the festivities of the 
night; and I leave you to imagine how he was re- 
ceived there. 

“Depart from my sight, thou evil Christian!” 
said the Sovereign Judge, the Master of us all. 


156 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ Thy sin is monstrous enough to efface a whole 
lifetime of virtue. Ah ! thou didst steal a mass from 
me. Even so! thou shalt pay for three hundred 
masses in its place, and thou shalt not enter paradise 
until thou hast celebrated in thine own chapel these 
three hundred Christmas masses, in the presence of 
all those who have sinned with thee and by thy 
fault.” 

And this is the true legend of Dom Balaguere, 
as it is told in the land of olives. The chateau of 
Trinquelage does not exist to-day, but the chapel 
still stands erect on the summit of Mount Ventoux, 
in a clump of green oaks. The wind sways its dis- 
jointed door, the grass grows on the threshold; 
there are nests at the corner of the altar and in the 
embrasures of the tall windows, whence the stained 
glass long since vanished. But it appears that 
every year, at Christmas, a supernatural light wan- 
ders among the ruins, and that as they go to the 
midnight masses and the reveillons , the peasants see 
that spectral chapel lighted by invisible candles, 
which burn in the open air, even in the snow and 
the wind. You may laugh if you please, but a vine- 
dresser of the neighborhood, named Garrigue, 
doubtless a descendant of Garrigou, tells me that 
one Christmas eve, being a little tipsy, he lost his 


The Three Low Masses 


157 


way on the mountain toward Trinquelage; and this 
is what he saw. Until eleven o’clock, nothing. 
Everything was silent, dark, lifeless. Suddenly, 
about midnight, a carillon rang out at the top of 
the belfry; an old, old carillon, which seemed to be 
ten leagues away. Soon, on the road up the moun- 
tain, Garrigue saw flickering flames and vague 
shadows. Beneath the porch of the chapel, people 
walked and whispered: 

“ Good evening, Master Arnoton! ” 

“ Good evening, good evening, my children.” 

When everybody had gone in, my vine-dresser, 
who was very courageous, noiselessly drew near, 
and looking through the broken door, saw a strange 
spectacle. All those people whom he had seen pass 
were arranged around the choir, in the ruined nave, 
as if the benches of olden time still existed. Fine 
ladies in brocade, nobles belaced from head to foot, 
peasants in gaudy jackets such as our great-grand- 
fathers wore, and all with a venerable, faded, dusty, 
weary aspect. From time to time, night-birds, the 
ordinary occupants of the chapel, aroused by that 
blaze of light, fluttered about the candles, whose 
flames ascended straight toward heaven, as indis- 
tinct as if they were burning behind gauze; and one 
thing that amused Garrigue greatly was a certain 
individual with great steel spectacles, who kept 


158 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

shaking his old black wig, upon which one of those 
birds stood erect, with its feet entangled in the hair, 
silently flapping its wings. 

In the background, a little old man, with a child- 
ish form, kneeling in the middle of the choir, shook 
desperately a tongueless, voiceless bell, while a 
priest, dressed in old gold, went to and fro before 
the altar, repeating prayers of which not a word 
could be heard. Beyond a doubt it was Dom 
Balaguere, saying his third low mass. 



THE HIGHWAYMAN 
Alfred Noyes 

I 

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the 
gusty trees, 

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy 
seas. 

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple 
moor, 

And the highwayman came riding — 

Riding — riding — 

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn- 
door. 


159 


160 M ore Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

He’d a French cocked-hat on his forehead, a bunch 
of lace at his chin, 

A coat of the claret velvet, and breeches of brown 
doe-skin ; 

They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up 
to the thigh! 

And he rode with a jeweled twinkle, 

His pistol butts a-twinkle, 

His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jeweled sky. 

Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the 
dark inn-yard, 

And he tapped with his whip on the shutters, but 
all was locked and barred; 

He whistled a tune to the window, and who should 
be waiting there 

But the landlord’s black-eyed daughter, 

Bess, the landlord’s daughter, 

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black 
hair. 

And dark in the dark old inn-yard a stable-wicket 
creaked 

Where Tim the ostler listened; his face was white 
and peaked; 

His eyes were hollows of madness, his hair like 
mouldy hay. 


The Highwayman 


161 


But he loved the landlord’s daughter, 

The landlord’s red-lipped daughter, 

Dumb as a dog he listened, and he heard the robber 
say: 

“ One kiss, my bonny sweetheart, I’m after a prize 
to-night, 

But I shall be back with the yellow gold before the 
morning light; 

Yet, if they press me sharply, and harry me 
through the day, 

Then look for me by moonlight, 

Watch for me by moonlight, 

I’ll come' to thee by moonlight, though hell should 
bar the way.” 

He rose upright in the stirrups; he scarce could 
reach her hand, 

But she loosened her hair i’ the casement! His face 
burnt like a brand 

As the black cascade of perfume came tumbling 
over his breast; 

And he kissed its waves in the moonlight, 

(Oh, sweet black waves in the moon- 
light!) 

Then he tugged at his rein in the moonlight, and 
galloped away to the West. 


162 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

II 

He did not come in the dawning; he did not come at 
noon ; 

And out o’ the tawny sunset, before the rise o’ the 
moon, 

When the road was a gipsy’s ribbon, looping the 
purple moor, 

A red-coat troop came marching — 

Marching — marching — 

King George’s men came marching, up to the old 
inn-door. 

They said no word to the landlord, they drank his 
ale instead, 

But they gagged his daughter and bound her to the 
foot of her narrow bed; 

Two of them knelt at her casement, with muskets 
at their side! 

There was death at every window; 

And hell at one dark window; 

For Bess could see, through her casement, the road 
that he would ride. 

They had tied her up to attention, with many a 
sniggering jest; 

They had bound a musket beside her, with the 
barrel beneath her breast ! 


163 


The Highwayman 

“ Now keep good watch! ” and they kissed her. 

She heard the dead man say — 

hook for me by moonlight ; 

Watch for me by moonlight ; 

Til come to thee by moonlight , though hell should 
bar the way! 

She twisted her hands behind her; but all the knots 
held good! 

She writhed her hands till her fingers were wet with 
sweat or blood! 

They stretched and strained in the darkness, and 
the hours crawled by like years, 

Till, now, on the stroke of midnight. 

Cold, on the stroke of midnight, 

The tip of one finger touched it! The trigger at 
least was hers ! 

The tip of one finger touched it; she strove no more 
for the rest ! 

Up, she stood up to attention, with the barrel be- 
neath her breast, 

She would not risk their hearing; she would not 
strive again ; 

For the road lay bare in the moonlight; 

Blank and bare in the moonlight ; 

And the blood of her veins in the moonlight 
throbbed to her love’s refrain. 


164 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Tlot-tlot; tlot-tlot! Had they heard it? The 
horse-hoofs ringing clear; 

Tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, in the distance? Were they 
deaf that they did not hear? 

Down the ribbon of moonlight, over the brow of the 
hill. 

The highwayman came riding, 

Riding, riding! 

The red-coats looked to their priming! She stood 
up, straight and still ! 

Tlot-tlot, in the frosty silence! Tlot-tlot, in the 
echoing night ! 

Nearer he came and nearer! Her face was like a 
light! 

Her eyes grew wide for a moment; she drew one 
last deep breath, 

Then her finger moved in the moonlight, 

Her musket shattered the moonlight, 

Shattered her breast in the moonlight and warned 
him — with her death. 

He turned; he spurred to the West; he did not 
know who stood 

Bowed, with her head o’er the musket, drenched 
with her own red blood! 

Not till the dawn he heard it, his face grew grey to 
hear 


The Highwayman 


1 65 


How Bess, the landlord’s daughter, 

The landlord’s black-eyed daughter, 

Had watched for her love in the moonlight, and 
died in the darkness there. 

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse 
to the sky, 

With the white road smoking behind him and his 
rapier brandished high ! 

Blood-red were his spurs i’ the golden noon; wine- 
red was his velvet coat, 

When they shot him down on the highway, 

Down like a dog on the highway, 

And he lay in his blood on the highway, with the 
bunch of lace at his throat. 

And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the 
wind is in the trees, 

When the moon is a ghostly galleon tossed upon 
cloudy seas. 

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the 
purple moor, 

A highwayman comes riding — 

Riding — riding — 

A highwayman comes riding, up to the old inn - 
door . 


166 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Over the cobbles he clatters and clangs in the dark 
inn-yard; 

He toys with his whip on the shutters, but all is 
locked and barred; 

He whistles a tune to the window, and who should 
be waiting there 

But the landlord's black-eyed daughter, 

Bess, the landlord's daughter. 

Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black 
hair . 


THE EVE OF ST. JOHN 
Sir Walter Scott 

The Baron of Smaylho’me rose with day, 
He spurr’d his courser on, 

Without stop or stay, down the rocky way, 
That leads to Brotherstone. 


He went not with the bold Buccleuch, 
His banner broad to rear; 

He went not ’gainst the English yew. 
To lift the Scottish spear. 


Yet his plate- jack was braced, and his helmet 
was laced, 

And his vaunt-brace of proof he wore ; 

At his saddle-gerthe was a good steel sperthe, 
Full ten pound weight and more. 


The Baron return’d in three days’ space, 
And his looks were sad and sour; 
And weary was his courser’s pace, 

As he reach’d his rocky tower. 

167 


168 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

He came not from where Ancram Moor 
Ran red with English blood ; 

Where the Douglas true, and the bold 
Buccleuch 

’Gainst keen Lord Evers stood. 

Yet was his helmet hack’d and hew’d, 

His acton pierced and tore. 

His axe and his dagger with blood imbrued, — 
But it was not English gore. 

He lighted at the Chapellage, 

He held him close and still ; 

And he whistled thrice for his little foot-page, 
His name was English Will. 

“ Come thou hither, my little foot-page; 

Come hither to my knee ; 

Though thou art young, and tender of age, 

I think thou art true to me. 

“ Come, tell me all that thou hast seen, 

And look thou tell me true! 

Since I from Smaylho’me tower have been, 
What did thy lady do? ” — 


The Eve of St. John 


169 


My lady, each night, sought the lonely light, 
That burns on the wild Watchfold; 

For, from height to height, the beacons bright 
Of the English foemen told. 


“ The bittern clamor’d from the moss, 
The wind blew loud and shrill; 

Yet the craggy pathway she did cross 
To the eiry Beacon Hill. 


u I watch’d her steps, and silent came 
Where she sat her on a stone; — 

No watchman stood by the dreary flame, 
It burned all alone. 

“ The second night I kept her in sight, 

Till to the fire she came, 

And, by Mary’s might ! an armed knight 
Stood by the lonely flame. 


“ And many a word that warlike lord 
Did speak to my lady there; 

But the rain fell fast, and loud blew the blast, 
And I heard not what they were. 


170 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 


“ The third night there the sky was fair, 
And the mountain-blast was still, 
As again I watch’d the secret pair, 
On the lonesome Beacon Hill. 


“ And I heard her name the midnight hour. 

And name this holy eve; 

And say, ‘ Come this night to thy lady’s bower; 
Ask no bold baron’s leave. 


“ * He lifts his spear with the bold Buccleuch; 
His lady is all alone; 

The door she’ll undo, to her knight so true, 
On the eve of good St. John ’ — 


“ ‘ I cannot come; I must not come; 

I dare not come to thee; 

On the eve of St. John I must wander alone; 
In thy bower I may not be.’ — 

“ ‘ Now, out on thee, faint-hearted knight! 
Thou shouldst not say me nay; 

For the eve is sweet, and when lovers meet, 

Is worth the whole summer’s day. 


The Eve of St. John 


171 


“ ‘ And I’ll chain the bloodhound, and the warder 
shall not sound, 

And rushes shall be strew’d on the stair; 

So, by the black rood-stone, and by holy St. 
John, 

I conjure thee, my love, to be there! ’ 


“ ‘ Though the bloodhound be mute, and the rush 
beneath my foot. 

And the warder his bugle should not blow, 
Yet there sleepeth a priest in a chamber to the 
east, 

And my footstep he would know ’ — 


“ ‘ O fear not the priest, who sleepeth to the east ! 
For to Dryburgh the way he has ta’en; 

And there to say mass, till three days do pass, 
For the soul of a knight that is slayne.’ 


“ He turn’d him around, and grimly He frown’d; 

Then he laughed right scornfully — 

* He who says the mass-rite for the soul of that 
knight, 

May as well say mass for me: 


172 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Gii'ls 

“ 4 At the lone midnight hour, when bad spirits 
have power, 

In thy chamber will I be/ — 

With that he was gone, and my lady left alone, 

And no more did I see.” — 

Then changed, I trow, was that bold Baron’s 
brow, 

From the dark to the blood-red high; 

“ Now, tell me the mien of the knight thou hast 
seen, 

For, by Mary, he shall die! ” — 


“ His arms shone full bright, in the beacon’s 
red light; 

His plume it was scarlet and blue; 

On his shield was a hound, in a silver leash 
bound, 

And his crest was a branch of the yew.” — 


“ Thou best, thou liest, thou little foot-page, 
Loud dost thou lie to me! 

For that knight is cold, and now laid in the 
mould, 

All under the Eildon-tree.” — 


The Eve of St. John 


173 


“ Yet hear but my word, my noble lord! 

For I heard her name his name ; 

And that lady bright, she called the knight 
Sir Richard of Coldinghame. ,, — 

The bold Baron’s brow then changed, I trow, 
From high blood-red to pale — 

“ The grave is deep and dark — and the corpse is 
stiff and stark — 

So I may not trust thy tale. 

u Where fair Tweed flows round holy Melrose, 
And Eildon slopes to the plain, 

Full three nights ago, by some secret foe, 

That gay gallant was slain. 

“ The varying light deceived thy sight, 

And the wild winds drown’d the name; 

For the Dryburgh bells ring, and the white 
monks do sing, 

For Sir Richard of Coldinghame! ” 

He pass’d the court-gate, and he oped the 
tower-gate, 

And he mounted the narrow stair, 

To the bartizan-seat, where, with maids that on 
her wait, 

He found his lady fair. 


174 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

That lady sat in mournful mood; 

Look'd over hill and vale; 

Over Tweed’s fair flood, and Mertoun’s wood, 
And all down Teviotdale. 

“ Now hail, now hail, thou lady bright! 

“ Now hail, thou Baron true! 

What news, what news, from Ancram fight? 
What news from the bold Buccleuch? ” — 

“ The Ancram Moor is red with gore. 

For many a Southron fell; 

And Buccleuch has charged us, evermore, 

To watch our beacons well.” — 

The lady blush’d red, but nothing she said: 

Nor added the Baron a word; 

Then she stepp’d down the stair to her chamber 
fair. 

And so did her moody lord. 

In sleep the lady mourn’d, and the Baron 
toss’d and turn’d, 

And oft to himself he said, — 

“ The worms around him creep, and his bloody 
grave is deep. , . . 

It cannot give up the dead! ” — 


The Eve of St. John 175 

It was near the ringing of matin-bell, 

The night was well-nigh done, 

When a heavy sleep on that Baron fell, 

On the eve of good St. John. 


The lady look’d through the chamber fair, 

By the light of a dying flame; 

And she was aware of a knight stood there — 
Sir Richard of Coldinghame! 

“ Alas! away, away! ” she cried, 

“ For the holy Virgin’s sake! ” — 

“ Lady, I know who sleeps by thy side; 

But, lady, he will not awake. 

“ By Eildon-tree, for long nights three, 

In bloody grave have I lain; 

The mass and the death-prayer are said for me, 
But, lady, they are said in vain. 

“By the Baron’s brand, near Tweed’s fair 
strand. 

Most foully slain, I fell; 

And my restless sprite on the beacon’s height 
For a space is doom’d to dwell. 


176 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ At our try sting-place, for a certain space, 

I must wander to and fro ; 

But I had not had power to come to thy bower, 
Hadst thou not conjured me so. ,, — 

Love master’d fear — her brow she crossed; 

“ How, Richard, hast thou sped? 

And art thou saved, or art thou lost? ” — 

The vision shook his head! 


“ Who spilleth life, shall forfeit life; 
So bid thy lord believe ; 

That lawless love is guilt above. 
This awful sign receive.” 


He laid his left palm on an oaken beam, 
His right upon her hand; 

The lady shrunk, and fainting sunk, 

For it scorch’d like a fiery brand. 


The sable score, of fingers four, 
Remains on that board impress’d; 
And for evermore that lady wore 
A covering on her wrist. 


The Eve of St. John 


177 


There is a nun in Dryburgh bower. 
Ne’er looks upon the sun; 

There is a monk in Melrose tower 
He speaketh word to none. 

That nun, who ne’er beholds the day, 
That monk, who speaks to none — 
That nun was Smaylho’me’s Lady gay. 
That monk the bold Baron. 



WANDERING WILLIE’S TALE 1 
Sir Walter Scott 

Ye maun have heard of Sir Robert Redgauntlet 
of that Ilk, who lived in these parts before the dear 
years. The country will lang mind him; and our 
fathers used to draw breath thick if ever they heard 
him named. He was out wi’ the Hielandmen in 
Montrose’s time; and again he was in the hills wi’ 
Glencairn in the saxteen hundred and fifty-twa; 
and sae when King Charles the Second came in, 
wha was in sic favor as the Laird of Redgauntlet? 
He was knighted at Lonon court, wi’ the King’s 

1 Wandering Willie, a blind fiddler, is one of the characters 
in “ Redgauntlet.” 


178 


179 


Wandering Willie's Tale 

ain sword; and being a red-hot prelatist, he came 
down here, rampauging like a lion, with commis- 
sions of lieutenancy (and of lunacy, for what I 
ken) , to put down a’ the Whigs and Covenanters in 
the country. Wild wark they made of it; for the 
Whigs were as dour as the Cavaliers were fierce, 
and it was which should first tire the other. Red- 
gauntlet was aye for the strong hand; and his name 
is kend as wide in the country as Claverhouse’s or 
Tam DalyelFs. Glen, nor dargle, nor mountain, 
nor cave could hide the puir Hill-folk when Red- 
gauntlet was out with bugle and bloodhound after 
them, as if they had been sae mony deer. And 
troth when they fand them, they didna mak muckle 
mair ceremony than a Hielandman wi’ a roebuck. 
It was just, “ Will ye tak the test? ” If not, 
“Make ready — present — fire!” and there lay the 
recusant. 

Far and wide was Sir Robert hated and feared. 
Men thought he had a direct compact with Satan; 
that he was proof against steel, and that bullets 
happed aff his buff coat like hailstanes from a 
hearth; that he had a mear that would turn a hare 
on the side of Carrifra Gawns 1 — and muckle to the 
same purpose, of whilk mair anon. The best bless- 
ing they wared on him was, “ Deil scowp wi’ Red- 


3 A precipitous side of a mountain in Moffatdale. 


180 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

gauntlet ! ” He wasna a bad master to his ain folk 
though, and was weel aneugh liked by his tenants ; 
and as for the lackies and troopers that raid out wi’ 
him to the persecutions, as the Whigs ca’d those 
killing times, they wad hae drunken themsells blind 
to his health at ony time. 

Now you are to ken that my gudesire lived on 
Redgauntlet’s grund; they ca’ the place Primrose 
Knowe. We had lived on the grund, and under the 
Redgauntlets, since the riding days, and lang be- 
fore. It was a pleasant bit; and I think the air is 
callerer and fresher there than onywhere else in the 
country. It’s a’ deserted now; and I sat on the 
broken door-cheek three days since, and was glad I 
couldna see the plight the place was in; but that’s 
a’ wide o’ the mark. There dwelt my gudesire, 
Steenie Steenson, a rambling, rattling chiel’ he had 
been in his young days, and could play weel on the 
pipes; he was famous at “ Hoopers and Girders,” 
a Cumberland couldna touch him at “ Jockie Lat- 
tin,” and he had the finest finger for the back-lilt 
between Berwick and Carlisle. The like o’ Steenie 
wasna the sort that they made Whigs o’. And so 
he became a Tory, as they ca’ it, which we now ca’ 
Jacobites, just out of a kind of needcessity, that he 
might belang to some side or other. He had nae 
ill-will to the Whig bodies, and liked little to see 


Wandering Willie's Tale 181 

the blude rin, though, being obliged to follow Sir 
Robert in hunting and hosting, watching and ward- 
ing, he saw muckle mischief, and maybe did some, 
that he couldna avoid. 

Now Steenie was a kind of favorite with his mas- 
ter, and kend a’ the folks about the castle, and was 
often sent for to play the pipes when they were at 
their merriment. Auld Dougal MacCallum, the 
butler, that had followed Sir Robert through gude 
and ill, thick and thin, pool and stream, was spe- 
cially fond of the pipes, and aye gae my gudesire 
his gude word wi’ the laird; for Dougal could turn 
his master round his finger. 

Weel, round came the Revolution, and it had like 
to have broken the hearts baith of Dougal and his 
master. But the change was not a’thegither sae 
great as they feared, and other folk thought for. 
The Whigs made an unco crawing what they wad 
do with their auld enemies, and in special wi’ Sir 
Robert Redgauntlet. But there were ower mony 
great folks dipped in the same doings to mak a 
spick and span new warld. So Parliament passed 
it a’ ower easy; and Sir Robert, bating that he was 
held to hunting foxes instead of Covenanters, re- 
mained just the man he was. His revel was as 
loud, and his hall as weel lighted, as ever it had 
been, though maybe he lacked the fines of the Non- 


182 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

conformists, that used to come to stock his larder 
and cellar; for it is certain he began to be keener 
about the rents than his tenants used to find him 
before, and they behoved to be prompt to the rent- 
day, or else the laird wasna pleased. And he was 
sic an awsome body that naebody cared to anger 
him; for the oaths he swore, and the rage that he 
used to get into, and the looks that he put on, made 
men sometimes think him a devil incarnate. 

Weel, my gudesire was nae manager — no that he 
was a very great misguider — but he hadna the sav- 
ing gift, and he got twa terms’ rent in arrear. He 
got the first brash at Whitsuntide put ower wi’ fair 
word and piping; but when Martinmas came, there 
was a summons from the grund-officer to come wi’ 
the rent on a day preceese, or else Steenie behoved 
to flit. Sair wark he had to get the siller; but he 
was weel-freended, and at last he got the* haill 
scraped thegither — a thousand merks; the maist of 
it was from a neighbor they ca’d Laurie Lapraik — 
a sly tod. Laurie had walth o’ gear — could hunt 
wi’ the hound and rin wi’ the hare — and be Whig 
or Tory, saunt or sinner, as the wind stood. He 
was a professor in this Revolution warld; but he 
liked an orra sough of this warld, and a tune on the 
pipes weel aneugh at a bye-time; and abune a’, he 
thought he had gude security for the siller he 


Wandering Willie's Tale 183 

lent my gudesire ower the stocking at Primrose 
Knowe. 

Away trots my gudesire to Redgauntlet Castle, 
wi’ a heavy purse and a light heart, glad to be out 
of the laird’s danger. Weel, the first thing he 
learned at the castle was that Sir Robert had fretted 
himsell into a fit of the gout, because he did not 
appear before twelve o’clock. It wasna a’thegither 
for sake of the money, Dougal thought; but be- 
cause he didna like to part wi’ my gudesire aff the 
grund. Dougal was glad to see Steenie, and 
brought him into the great oak parlor, an’ there sat 
the laird his leesome lane, excepting that he had 
beside him a great ill-favored jackanape, that was 
a special pet of his — a cankered beast it was, and 
mony an ill-natured trick it played; ill to please it 
was, and easily angered — ran about the haill castle, 
chattering and yowling, and pinching and biting 
folk, specially before ill weather, or disturbances in 
the state. Sir Robert ca’d it Major Weir, after 
the warlock that was burnt; 1 and few folk 
liked either the name or the conditions of the 
creature — they thought there was something in it 
by or dinar — and my gudesire was not just easy in 
mind when the door shut on him, and he saw him- 

J A celebrated wizard, executed at Edinburgh for sorcery 
and other crimes. 


184 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

self in the room wi’ naebody but the laird, Dougal 
MacCallum, and the major, a thing that hadna 
chanced to him before. 

Sir Robert sat, or, I should say, lay, in a great 
armed chair, wi’ his grand velvet gown, and his feet 
on a cradle; for he had baith gout and gravel, and 
his face looked as gash and ghastly as Satan’s. 
Major Weir sat opposite to him, in a red laced 
coat, and the laird’s wig on his head; and aye as Sir 
Robert girned wi’ pain, the jackanape girned too, 
like a sheep’s-head between a pair of tangs — an ill- 
faur’d, fearsome couple they were. The laird’s 
buff-coat was hung on a pin behind him, and his 
broadsword and his pistols within reach; for he 
keepit up the auld fashion of having the weapons 
ready, and a horse saddled day and night, just as 
he used to do when he was able to loup on horse- 
back, and away after ony of the Hill-folk he could 
get speerings of. Some said it was for fear of the 
Whigs taking vengeance, but I judge it was just 
his auld custom — he wasna gien to fear onything. 
The rental-book, wi’ its black cover and brass clasps, 
was lying beside him; and a book of sculduddery 
sangs was put betwixt the leaves, to keep it open at 
the place where it bore evidence against the good- 
man of Primrose Knowe, as behind the hand with 
his mails and duties. Sir Robert gave my gudesire 


Wandering Willie’s Tale 185 

a look as if he would have withered his heart in his 
bosom. Ye maun ken he had a way of bending his 
brows that men saw the visible mark of a horseshoe 
in his forehead, deep-dinted, as if it had been 
stamped there. 

“Are ye come light-handed, ye son of a toom 
whistle?” said Sir Robert. “Zounds! if you 


My gudesire, with as gude a countenance as he 
could put on, made a leg, and placed the bag of 
money on the table wi’ a dash, like a man that does 
something clever. The laird drew it to him has- 
tily. “ Is it all here, Steenie, man? ” 

“ Your honor will find it right,” said my gude- 
sire. 

“ Here, Dougal,” said the laird, “ gie Steenie a 
tass of brandy down-stairs, till I count the siller 
and write the receipt.” 

But they werena weel out of the room when Sir 
Robert gied a yellock that garr’d the castle rock. 
Back ran Dougal — in flew the livery-men — yell on 
yell gied the laird, ilk ane mair awfu’ than the ither. 
My gudesire knew not whether to stand or flee, but 
he ventured back into the parlor, where a’ was 
gaun hirdy-girdie — naebody to say “ come in ” or 
“ gae out.” Terribly the laird roared for cauld 
water to his feet, and wine to cool his throat; and 


186 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ Hell, hell, hell, and its flames/’ was aye the word 
in his mouth. They brought him water, and when 
they plunged his swoln feet into the tub, he cried 
out it was burning; and folk say that it did bubble 
and sparkle like a seething cauldron. He flung the 
cup at Dougal’s head, and said he had given him 
blood instead of burgundy; and, sure aneugh, the 
lass washed clotted blood aff the carpet the neist 
day. The jackanape they ca’d Major Weir, it jib- 
bered and cried as if it was mocking its master. 
My gudesire’s head was like to turn; he forgot baith 
siller and receipt, and down-stairs he banged; but 
as he ran, the shrieks came faint and fainter; there 
was a deep-drawn shivering groan, and word gaed 
through the castle that the laird was dead. 

Weel, away came my gudesire wi’ his finger in 
his mouth, and his best hope was that Dougal had 
seen the money-bag, and heard the laird speak of 
writing the receipt. The young laird, now Sir 
John, came from Edinburgh to see things put to 
rights. Sir J ohn and his father never gree’d weel. 
Sir John had been bred an advocate, and after- 
wards sat in the last Scots Parliament and voted for 
the Union, having gotten, it was thought, a rug of 
the compensations; if his father could have come 
out of his grave he would have brained him for it on 
his awn hearthstane. Some thought it was easier 


Wandering Willie's Tale 187 

counting with the auld rough knight than the fair- 
spoken young ane — but mair of that anon. 

Dougal MacCallum, poor body, neither grat nor 
graned, but gaed about the house looking like a 
corpse, but directing, as was his duty, a’ the order 
of the grand funeral. Now, Dougal looked aye 
waur and waur when night was coming, and was 
aye the last to gang to his bed, whilk was in a little 
round just opposite the chamber of dais, whilk his 
master occupied while he was living, and where he 
now lay in state, as they ca’d it, weel-a-day! The 
night before the funeral, Dougal could keep his awn 
counsel nae langer; he came doun with his proud 
spirit, and fairly asked auld Hutcheon to sit in his 
room with him for an hour. When they were in 
the round, Dougal took ae tass of brandy to himsell 
and gave another to Hutcheon, and wished him all 
health and lang life, and said that, for himsell, he 
wasna lang for this world; for that, every night 
since Sir Robert’s death, his silver call had sounded 
from the state chamber, just as it used to do at 
nights in his lifetime, to call Dougal to help to turn 
him in his bed. Dougal said that, being alone with 
the dead on that floor of the tower (for naebody 
cared to wake Sir Robert Redgauntlet like another 
corpse) , he had never daured to answer the call, but 
that now his conscience checked him for neglecting 


188 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

his duty; for, “ though death breaks service,” said 
MacCallum, “ it shall never break my service to Sir 
Robert; and I will answer his next whistle, so be 
you will stand by me, Hutcheon.” 

Hutcheon had nae will to the wark, but he had 
stood by Dougal in battle and broil, and he wad not 
fail him at this pinch; so down the carles sat ower 
a stoup of brandy, and Hutcheon, who was some- 
thing of a clerk, would have read a chapter of the 
Bible; but Dougal would hear naething but a blaud 
of Davie Lindsay, whilk was the waur prepara- 
tion. 

When midnight came, and the house was quiet as 
the grave, sure enough the silver whistle sounded as 
sharp and shrill as if Sir Robert was blowing it, 
and up got the twa auld serving-men and tottered 
into the room where the dead man lay. Hutcheon 
saw aneugh at the first glance; for there were 
torches in the room, which showed him the foul 
fiend in his ain shape, sitting on the laird’s coffin! 
Ower he cowped as if he had been dead. He could 
not tell how lang he lay in a trance at the door, but 
when he gathered himself he cried on his neighbor, 
and getting nae answer, raised the house, when 
Dougal was found lying dead within twa steps of 
the bed where his master’s coffin was placed. As 
for the whistle, it was gaen anes and aye; but mony 


Wandering Willie's Tale 189 

a time was it heard at the top of the house on the 
bartizan, and amang the auld chimneys and turrets, 
where the howlets have their nests. Sir John 
hushed the matter up, and the funeral passed over 
without mair bogle-wark. 

But when a’ was ower, and the laird was begin- 
ning to settle his affairs, every tenant was called up 
for his arrears, and my gudesire for the full sum 
that stood against him in the rental-book. Weel, 
away he trots to the castle, to tell his story, and 
there he is introduced to Sir John, sitting in his 
father’s chair, in deep mourning, with weepers and 
hanging cravat, and a small walking rapier by his 
side, instead of the auld broadsword that had a hun- 
dred weight of steel about it, what with blade, 
chape, and basket-hilt. I have heard their com- 
muning so often tauld ower, that I almost think I 
was there mysell, though I couldna be born at the 
time. 

“ I wuss ye joy, sir, of the head seat, and the 
white loaf, and the braid lairdship. Your father 
was a kind man to friends and followers; muckle 
grace to you, Sir John, to fill his shoon — his boots, 
I suld say, for he seldom wore shoon, unless it were 
muils when he had the gout.” 

“Ay, Steenie,” quoth the laird, sighing deeply, 
and putting his napkin to his een, “ his was a sud- 


190 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

den call, and he will be missed in the country; no 
time to set his house in order; weel prepared God- 
ward, no doubt, which is the root of the matter, but 
left us behind a tangled hesp to wind, Steenie. 
Hem! hem! We maun go to business, Steenie; 
much to do, and little time to do it in.” 

Here he opened the fatal volume. I have heard 
of a thing they call Doomsday Book — I am clear it 
has been a rental of back-ganging tenants. 

“ Stephen,” said Sir John, still in the same soft, 
sleekit tone of voice — “ Stephen Stevenson, or 
Steenson, ye are down here for a year’s rent behind 
the hand, due at last term.” 

Stephen . “ Please your honor, Sir John, I paid 

it to your father.” 

Sir John . “ Ye took a receipt then, doubtless, 

Stephen, and can produce it? ” 

Stephen . “ Indeed I hadna time, an it like your 

honor; for nae sooner had I set doun the siller, and 
just as his honor Sir Robert, that’s gaen, drew it till 
him to count it, and write out the receipt, he was 
ta’en Wi’ the pains that removed him.” 

“ That was unlucky,” said Sir John, after a 
pause. “ But ye maybe paid it in the presence of 
somebody. I want but a talis qualis evidence, 
Stephen. I would go ower strictly to work with no 
poor man.” 


Wandering Willie's Tale 191 

Stephen. 44 Troth, Sir John, there was naebody 
in the room but Dougal MacCallum, the butler. 
But, as your honor kens, he has e’en followed his 
auld master.” 

44 Very unlucky again, Stephen,” said Sir John, 
without altering his voice a single note. 44 The man 
to whom ye paid the money is dead; and the man 
who witnessed the payment is dead, too; and the 
siller, which should have been to the fore, is neither 
seen nor heard tell of in the repositories. How am 
I to believe a’ this? ” 

Stephen. 44 1 dinna ken, your honor; but there is 
a bit memorandum note of the very coins — for, God 
help me! I had to borrow out of twenty purses — 
and I am sure that ilka man there set down will 
take his grit oath for what purpose I borrowed the 
money.” 

Sir John. 44 1 have little doubt ye borrowed the 
money, Steenie. It is the payment to my father 
that I want to have some proof of.” 

Stephen. 44 The siller maun be about the house, 
Sir John. And since your honor never got it, and 
his honor that was canna have taen it wi’ him, 
maybe some of the family may have seen it.” 

Sir John. 44 We will examine the servants, 
Stephen ; that is but reasonable.” 

But lackey and lass, and page and groom, all de- 


192 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

nied stoutly that they had ever seen such a bag of 
money as my gudesire described. What was waur, 
he had unluckily not mentioned to any living soul of 
them his purpose of paying his rent. Ae quean had 
noticed something under his arm, but she took it for 
the pipes. 

Sir John Redgauntlet ordered the servants out 
of the room, and then said to my gudesire, “ Now, 
Steenie, ye see you have fair play; and, as I have 
little doubt ye ken better where to find the siller 
than ony other body, I beg, in fair terms, and for 
your own sake, that you will end this fasherie; for, 
Stephen, ye maun pay or flit.” 

“ The Lord forgie your opinion,” said Stephen, 
driven almost to his wit’s end — “ I am an honest 
man.” 

“ So am I, Stephen,” said his honor; “ and so are 
all the folks in the house, I hope. But if there be 
a knave amongst us, it must be he that tells the 
story he cannot prove.” 

He paused, and then added, mair sternly, “ If I 
understand your trick, sir, you want to take advan- 
tage of some malicious reports concerning things in 
this family, and particularly respecting my father’s 
sudden death, thereby to cheat me out of the money, 
and perhaps take away my character, by insinuat- 
ing that I have received the rent I am demanding. 


Wandering Willie's Tale 193 

Where do you suppose this money to be? I insist 
upon knowing.” 

My gudesire saw everything look so muckle 
against him that he grew nearly desperate; how- 
ever, he shifted from one foot to another, looked to 
every corner of the room, and made no answer. 

“ Speak out, sirrah,” said the laird, assuming a 
look of his father’s — a very particular ane, which he 
had when he was angry ; it seemed as if the wrinkles 
of his frown made that selfsame fearful shape of a 
horse’s shoe in the middle of his brow — “ speak out, 
sir ! I will know your thoughts. Do you suppose 
that I have this money? ” 

“ Far be it frae me to say so,” said Stephen. 

“ Do you charge any of my people with having 
taken it? ” 

“ I wad be laith to charge them that may be inno- 
cent,” said my gudesire; “ and if there be any one 
that is guilty, I have nae proof.” 

“ Somewhere the money must be, if there is a 
word of truth in your story,” said Sir John; “ I ask 
where you think it is, and demand a correct an- 
swer.” 

“ In hell, if you will have my thoughts of it,” said 
my gudesire, driven to extremity — “ in hell ! with 
your father, his jackanape, and his silver whistle.” 

Down the stairs he ran, for the parlor was nae 


194 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

place for him after such a word, and he heard the 
laird swearing blood and wounds behind him, as 
fast as ever did Sir Robert, and roaring for the 
bailie and the baron-officer. 

Away rode my gudesire to his chief creditor, him 
they ca’d Laurie Lapraik, to try if he could make 
ony thing out of him; but when he tauld his story, 
he got but the warst word in his wame — thief, beg- 
gar, and dyvour were the saf test terms ; and to the 
boot of these hard terms, Laurie brought up the 
auld story of his dipping his hand in the blood of 
God’s saunts, just as if a tenant could have helped 
riding with the laird, and that a laird like Sir Rob- 
ert Redgauntlet. My gudesire was by this time far 
beyond the bounds of patience, and while he and 
Laurie were at deil speed the liars, he was wan- 
chancie aneugh to abuse Lapraik’s doctrine as weel 
as the man, and said things that garr’d folks’ flesh 
grue that heard them; he wasna just himsell, and he 
had lived wi’ a wild set in his day. 

At last they parted, and my gudesire was to ride 
hame through the wood of Pitmurkie, that is a’ fou 
of black firs, as they say. I ken the wood, but the 
firs may be black or white for what I can tell. At 
the entry of the wood there is a wild common, and 
on the edge of the common a little lonely change- 
house, that was keepit then by an ostler- wife — they 


195 


Wandering Willie's Tale 

suld hae ca’d her Tibbie Faw — and there puir 
Steenie cried for a mutchkin of brandy, for he had 
had no refreshment the haill day. Tibbie was ear- 
nest wi’ him to take a bite of meat, but he couldna 
think o’t, nor would he take his foot out of the stir- 
rup, and took off the brandy wholely at twa 
draughts, and named a toast at each — the first was, 
the memory of Sir Robert Redgauntlet, and might 
he never lie quiet in his grave till he had righted his 
poor bond-tenant; and the second was, a health to 
Man’s Enemy, if he would but get him back the 
pock of siller or tell him what came o’t, for he saw 
the haill world was like to regard him as a thief and 
a cheat, and he took that waur than even the ruin 
of his house and hauld. 

On he rode, little caring where. It was a dark 
night turned, and the trees made it yet darker, and 
he let the beast take its ain road through the wood; 
when, all of a sudden, from tired and wearied that 
it was before, the nag began to spring, and flee, and 
stend, that my gudesire could hardly keep the sad- 
dle; upon the whilk, a horseman, suddenly riding 
up beside him, said, “ That’s a mettle beast of yours, 
freend; will you sell him? ” So saying, he touched 
the horse’s neck with his riding-wand, and it fell 
into its auld heigh-ho of a stumbling trot. “ But 
his spunk’s soon out of him, I think,” continued the 


196 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

stranger, “ and that is like mony a man’s courage, 
that thinks he wad do great things till he come to 
the proof.” 

My gudesire scarce listened to this, but spurred 
his horse, with “ Gude e’en to you, freend.” 

But it’s like the stranger was ane that doesna 
lightly yield his point ; for, ride as Steenie liked, he 
was aye beside him at the selfsame pace. At last 
my gudesire, Steenie Steenson, grew half angry, 
and, to say the truth, half feared. 

“ What is it that ye want with me, freend? ” he 
said. “ If ye be a robber, I have nae money; if ye 
be a leal man, wanting company, I have nae heart 
to mirth or speaking; and if ye want to ken the 
road, I scarce ken it mysell.” 

“ If you will tell me your grief,” said the stran- 
ger, “ I am one that, though I have been sair mis- 
ca’d in the world, am the only hand for helping my 
freends.” 

So my gudesire, to ease his ain heart, mair than 
from any hope of help, told him the story from 
beginning to end. 

“ It’s a hard pinch,” said the stranger; “but I 
think I can help you.” 

“ If you could lend the money, sir, and take a 
lang day — I ken nae other help on earth,” said my 
gudesire. 


Wandering Willie's Tale 197 

“ But there may be some under the earth,” said 
the stranger. “ Come, I’ll be frank wi’ you; I could 
lend you the money on bond, but you would maybe 
scruple my terms. Now, I can tell you that your 
auld laird is disturbed in his grave by your curses, 
and the wailing of your family, and if ye daur ven- 
ture to go to see him, he will give you the receipt.” 

My gudesire’s hair stood on end at this proposal, 
but he thought his companion might be some hu- 
morsome chield that was trying to frighten him, and 
might end with lending him the money. Besides, 
he was bauld wi’ brandy, and desperate wi’ distress ; 
and he said he had courage to go to the gate of hell, 
and a step farther, for that receipt. 

The stranger laughed. 

Weel, they rode on through the thickest of the 
wood, when, all of a sudden, the horse stopped at 
the door of a great house; and, but that he knew the 
place was ten miles off, my father would have 
thought he was at Redgauntlet Castle. They rode 
into the outer courtyard, through the muckle fauld- 
ing yetts, and aneath the auld portcullis; and the 
whole front of the house was lighted, and there were 
pipes and fiddles, and as much dancing and deray 
within as used to be in Sir Robert’s house at Pace 
and Yule, and such high seasons. They lap off, 
and my gudesire, as seemed to him, fastened his 


198 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

horse to the very ring he had tied him to that morn- 
ing, when he gaed to wait on the young Sir J ohn. 

“ God! ” said my gudesire, “ if Sir Robert’s death 
be but a dream! ” 

He knocked at the ha’ door just as he was wont, 
and his auld acquaintance, Dougal MacCallum, 
just after his wont, too, came to open the door, and 
said, “ Piper Steenie, are ye there, lad? Sir Robert 
has been crying for you.” 

My gudesire was like a man in a dream ; he looked 
for the stranger, but he was gane for the time. At 
last he just tried to say, “ Ha! Dougal Driveower, 
are ye living? I thought ye had been dead.” 

“ Never fash yoursell wi’ me,” said Dougal, “ but 
look to yoursell ; and see ye tak naething f rae ony- 
body here, neither meat, drink, or siller, except just 
the receipt that is your ain.” 

So saying, he led the way out through halls and 
trances that were weel kend to my gudesire, and 
into the auld oak parlor; and there was as much 
singing of profane songs, and billing of red wine, 
and speaking blasphemy and sculduddery, as had 
ever been in Redgauntlet Castle when it was at the 
blithest. 

But, Lord take us in keeping! what a set of 
ghastly revelers they were that sat round that table! 
My gudesire kend mony that had long before gane 


199 


Wandering Willie's Tale 

to their place, for often had he piped to the most 
part in the hall of Redgauntlet. There was the 
fierce Middleton, and the dissolute Rothes, and the 
crafty Lauderdale; and Dalyell, with his bald head 
and a beard to his girdle; and Earlshall, with Cam- 
eron’s blude on his hand; and wild Bonshaw, that 
tied blessed Mr. Cargill’s limbs till the blude 
sprung; and Dumbarton Douglas, the twice-turned 
traitor baith to country and king. There was the 
Bluidy Advocate MacKenyie, who, for his worldly 
wit and wisdom, had been to the rest as a god. And 
there was Claverhouse, as beautiful as when he 
lived, with his long, dark, curled locks, streaming 
down over his laced buff-coat, and his left-hand 
always on his right spule-blade, to hide the wound 
that the silver bullet had made. He sat apart from 
them all, and looked at them with a melancholy, 
haughty countenance; while the rest hallooed, and 
sung, and laughed, that the room rang. But their 
smiles were fearfully contorted from time to time; 
and their laughter passed into such wild sounds as 
made my gudesire’s very nails grow blue, and 
chilled the marrow in his banes. 

They that waited at the table were just the 
wicked serving-men and troopers that had done 
their work and cruel bidding on earth. There was 
the Lang Lad of the Nethertown, that helped to 


200 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

take Argyle ; and the bishop’s summoner, that they; 
called the Deil’s Rattle-bag; and the wicked guards- 
men, in their laced coats ; and the savage Highland 
Amorites, that shed blood like water; and mony a 
proud serving-man, haughty of heart and bloody of 
hand, cringing to the rich, and making them wick- 
eder than they would be ; grinding the poor to pow- 
der, when the rich had broken them to fragments. 
And mony, mony mair were coming and ganging, 
a’ as busy in their vocation as if they had been alive. 

Sir Robert Redgauntlet, in the midst of a’ this 
fearful riot, cried, wi’ a voice like thunder, on 
Steenie Piper to come to the board-head where he 
was sitting, his legs stretched out before him, and 
swathed up with flannel, with his holster pistols 
aside him, while the great broadsword rested against 
his chair, just as my gudesire had seen him the last 
time upon earth — the very cushion for the jacka- 
nape was close to him, but the creature itsell was 
not there; it wasna its hour, it’s likely; for he heard 
them say as he came forward, “ Is not the major 
come yet? ” And another answered, “ The jacka- 
nape will be here betimes the morn.” And when my 
gudesire came forward, Sir Robert, or his ghaist, or 
the deevil in his likeness, said, “ Weel, piper, hae 
ye settled wi’ my son for the year’s rent? ” 

With much ado my father gat breath to say that 


Wandering Willie's Tale 201 

Sir John would not settle without his honors re- 
ceipt. 

“Ye shall hae that for a tune of the pipes, 
Steenie,” said the appearance of Sir Robert. 
“ Play us up, ‘ Weel hoddled, Luckie.’ ” 

Now this was a tune my gudesire learned frae a 
warlock, that heard it when they were worshiping 
Satan at their meetings, and my gudesire had some- 
times played it at the ranting suppers in Redgaunt- 
let Castle, but never very willingly; and now he 
grew cauld at the very name of it, and said, for 
excuse, he hadna his pipes wi’ him. 

“ MacCallum, ye limb of Beelzebub,” said the 
fearfu’ Sir Robert, “ bring Steenie the pipes that I 
am keeping for him! ” 

MacCallum brought a pair of pipes might have 
served the piper of Donald of the Isles. But he 
gave my gudesire a nudge as he offered them; 
and looking secretly and closely, Steenie saw that 
the chanter was of steel, and heated to a white heat ; 
so he had fair warning not to trust his fingers with 
it. So he excused himself again, and said he was 
faint and frightened, and had not wind aneugh to 
fill the bag. 

“ Then ye maun eat and drink, Steenie,” said the 
figure; “ for we do little else here; and it’s ill speak- 
ing between a fou man and a fasting.” 


202 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Now these were the very words that the bloody 
Earl of Douglas said to keep the king’s messenger 
in hand, while he cut the head off MacLellan of 
Bombie, at the Threave Castle, and that put Steenie 
mair and mair on his guard. So he spoke up like a 
man, and said he came neither to eat, or drink, or 
make minstrelsy, but simply for his ain — to ken 
what was come o’ the money he had paid, and to get 
a discharge for it; and he was so stout-hearted by 
this time, that he charged Sir Robert for conscience’ 
sake (he had no power to say the holy name), and 
as he hoped for peace and rest, to spread no snares 
for him, but just to give him his ain. 

The appearance gnashed its teeth and laughed, 
but it took from a large pocket-book the receipt, 
and handed it to Steenie. “ There is your receipt, 
ye pitiful cur; and for the money, my dog- whelp of 
a son may go look for it in the Cat’s Cradle.” 

My gudesire uttered mony thanks, and was about 
to retire when Sir Robert roared aloud, “ Stop 
though, I am not done with thee. Here we do 
nothing for nothing; and you must return on this 
very day twelvemonth to pay your master the hom- 
age that you owe me for my protection.” 

My father’s tongue was loosed of a suddenty, and 
he said aloud, “ I refer mysell to God’s pleasure, 
and not to yours.” 


Wandering Willie's Tale 203 

He had no sooner uttered the word than all was 
dark around him, and he sunk on the earth with 
such a sudden shock, that he lost both breath and 
sense. 

How lang Steenie lay there, he could not tell; 
but when he came to himsell, he was lying in the 
auld kirkyard of Redgauntlet parochine, just at the 
door of the family aisle, and the scutcheon of the 
auld knight. Sir Robert, hanging over his head. 
There was a deep morning fog on grass and grave- 
stane around him, and his horse was feeding quietly 
beside the minister’s twa cows. Steenie would 
have thought the whole was a dream, but he had 
the receipt in his hand, fairly written and signed by 
the auld laird; only the last letters of his name were 
a little disorderly, written like one seized with sud- 
den pain. 

Sorely troubled in his mind, he left that dreary 
place, rode through the mist to Redgauntlet Castle, 
and with much ado he got speech of the laird. 

“ Well, you dyvour bankrupt,” was the first 
word, “ have you brought me my rent? ” 

“ No,” answered my gudesire, “ I have not; but I 
have brought your honor Sir Robert’s receipt 
for it.” 

“ How, sirrah? Sir Robert’s receipt! You told 
me he had not given you one.” 


204 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

44 Will your honor please to see if that bit line is 
right?” 

Sir John looked at every line, and at every letter, 
with much attention, and at last at the date, which 
my gudesire had not observed — 44 ‘ From my ap- 
pointed place/ he read, 4 this twenty-fifth of No- 
vember/ What ! That is yesterday ! Villain, thou 
must have gone to Hell for this ! ” 

44 I got it from your honor’s father; whether he 
be in Heaven or Hell, I know not,” said Steenie. 

“ I will delate you for a warlock to the privy 
council! ” said Sir John. 44 1 will send you to your 
master, the devil, with the help of a tar-barrel and a 
torch! ” 

44 1 intend to delate mysell to the presbytery,” 
said Steenie, 44 and tell them all I have seen last 
night, whilk are things fitter for them to judge of 
than a borrel man like me.” 

Sir John paused, composed himsell, and desired 
to hear the full history; and my gudesire told it him 
from point to point, as I have told it you — word for 
word, neither more nor less. 

Sir John was silent again for a long time, and at 
last he said, very composedly, 44 Steenie, this story 
of yours concerns the honor of many a noble family 
besides mine ; and if it be a leasing-making, to keep 
yourself out of my danger, the least you can expect 


Wandering Willie's Tale 20 5 

is to have red-hot iron driven through your tongue, 
and that will be as bad as scauding your fingers wi’ 
a red-hot chanter. But yet it may be true, Steenie; 
and if the money cast up, I shall not know what to 
think of it. But where shall we find the Cat’s 
Cradle? There are cats enough about the old 
house, but I think they kitten without the ceremony 
of bed or cradle.” 

“ We were best ask Hutcheon,” said my gude- 
sire; “ he kens a’ the odd corners about as weel as — 
another serving-man that is now gane, and that I 
wad not like to name.” 

Aweel, Hutcheon, when he was asked, told them 
that a ruinous turret, lang disused, next to the clock- 
house, only accessible by a ladder, for the opening 
was on the outside, and far above the battlements, 
was called of old the Cat’s Cradle. 

“There will I go immediately,” said Sir John; 
and he took (with what purpose. Heaven kens) one 
of his father’s pistols from the hall-table, where they 
had lain since the night he died, and hastened to the 
battlements. 

It was a dangerous place to climb, for the ladder 
was auld and frail, and wanted ane or twa rounds. 
However, up got Sir John, and entered at the tur- 
ret door, where his body stopped the only little light 
that was in the bit turret. Something flees at him 


206 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

wi’ a vengeance, maist dang him back ower; bang 
gaed the knight’s pistol, and Hutcheon, that held 
the ladder, and my gudesire that stood beside him, 
hears a loud skelloch. A minute after, Sir John 
flings the body of the jackanape down to them, and 
cries that the siller is fund, and that they should 
come up and help him. And there was the bag of 
siller sure aneugh, and mony orra things besides 
that had been missing for mony a day. And Sir 
John, when he had riped the turret weel, led my 
gudesire into the dining-parlor, and took him by 
the hand, and spoke kindly to him, and said he was 
sorry he should have doubted his word, and that he 
would hereafter be a good master to him, to make 
amends. 

“And now, Steenie,” said Sir John, “ although 
this vision of yours tends, on the whole, to my fa- 
ther’s credit, as an honest man, that he should, even 
after his death, desire to see justice done to a poor 
man like you, yet you are sensible that ill-disposi- 
tioned men might make bad constructions upon it, 
concerning his soul’s health. So, I think, we had 
better lay the haill dirdum on that ill-deedie crea- 
ture, Major Weir, and say naething about your 
dream in the wood of Pitmurkie. You had taken 
ower muckle brandy to be very certain about ony- 
thing; and, Steenie, this receipt (his hand shook 


207 


Wandering Willie's Tale 

while he held it out), it’s but a queer kind of docu- 
ment, and we will do best, I think, to put it quietly; 
in the fire.” 

“ Od, but for as queer as it is, it’s a’ the voucher 
I have for my rent,” said my gudesire, who was 
afraid, it may be, of losing the benefit of Sir Rob- 
ert’s discharge. 

“ I will bear the contents to your credit in the 
rental-book, and give you a discharge under my own 
hand,” said Sir John, “ and that on the spot. And, 
Steenie, if you can hold your tongue about this 
matter, you shall sit, from this term downward, at 
an easier rent.” 

“ Mony thanks to your honor,” said Steenie, who 
saw easily in what corner the wind was ; “ doubtless 
I will be conformable to all your honor’s com- 
mands ; only I would willingly speak wi’ some pow- 
erful minister on the subject, for I do not like the 
sort of soumons of appointment whilk your honor’s 
father ” 

“ Do not call the phantom my father! ” said Sir 
John, interrupting him. 

“ Weel, then, the thing that was so like him,” 
said my gudesire; “ he spoke of my coming back to 
him this time twelvemonth, and it’s a weight on my 
conscience.” 

“Aweel, then,” said Sir J ohn, “ if you be so much 


208 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

distressed in mind, you may speak to our minister 
of the parish; he is a douce man, regards the honor 
of our family, and the mair that he may look for 
some patronage from me.” 

Wi* that my father readily agreed that the re- 
ceipt should be burnt, and the laird threw it into the 
chimney with his ain hand. Burn it would not for 
them, though; but away it flew up the lum, wi’ a 
lang train of sparks at its tail, and a hissing noise 
like a squib. 

My gudesire gaed down to the manse, and the 
minister, when he had heard the story, said it was 
his real opinion that, though my gudesire had gaen 
very far in tampering with dangerous matters, yet, 
as he had refused the devil’s arles (for such was the 
offer of meat and drink), and had refused to do 
homage by piping at his bidding, he hoped, that if 
he held a circumspect walk hereafter, Satan could 
take little advantage by what was come and gane. 
And, indeed, my gudesire, of his ain accord, lang 
foreswore baith the pipes and the brandy; it was not 
even till the year was out, and the fatal day passed, 
that he would so much as take the fiddle, or drink 
usquebaugh or tippenny. 

Sir John made up his story about the jackanape 
as he liked himsell; and some believe till this day 
there was no more in the matter than the filching 


Wandering Willie's Tale 209 

nature of the brute. Indeed, ye’ll no hinder some 
to threap that it was nane o’ the Auld Enemy that 
Dougal and my gudesire saw in the laird’s room, 
but only that wanchancy creature, the major, ca- 
pering on the coffin; and that, as to the blawing on 
the laird’s whistle that was heard after he was dead, 
the filthy brute could do that as weel as the laird 
himsell, if no better. But Heaven kens the truth, 
whilk first came out by the minister’s wife, after Sir 
John and her ain gudeman were baith in the moulds. 
And then, my gudesire, wha was failed in his limbs, 
but not in his judgment or memory — at least noth- 
ing to speak of — was obliged to tell the real narra- 
tive to his f reends for the credit of his good name. 
He might else have been charged for a warlock. 


EDENBAIN 
Alexander Smith 

l Young Edenbain canter’d 
Across to Kilmuir, 

The road was rough, 

But his horse was sure. 

The mighty sun taking 
His splendid sea-bath, 

Made golden the greenness 
Of valley and strath. 

He cared not for sunset, 

For gold rock nor isle : 

O’er his dark face there flitted 
A secretive smile. 

His cousin, the great 

London merchant was dead, 
Edenbain was his heir — 

“ I’ll buy lands,” he said. 

“ Men fear death. How should I ! 
We live and we learn — 

I’ faith, death has done me 
The handsomest turn. 

210 


Edenbain 


211 


Young, good-looking, thirty — 
(Hie on, Roger, hie!) 

I’ll taste every pleasure 
That money can buy. 

“ Duntulm and Dunsciach 
May laugh at my birth. 

Let them laugh ! Father Adam 
Was made out of earth. 

What are worm-eaten castles 
And ancestry old, 

’Gainst a modern purse stuff’d 
With omnipotent gold? ” 

He saw himself riding 
To kirk and to fair, 

Hats lifting, arms nudging, 

“ That’s Edenbain, there! ” 
He thought of each girl 
He had known in his life, 

Nor could fix on which sweetness 
To pluck for a wife. 

Home Edenbain canter’d, 

With pride in his heart, 

When sudden he pull’d up 
His horse with a start. 


212 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

The road, which was bare 
As the desert before, 

Was cover’d with people 
A hundred and more. 

’Twas a black, creeping funeral; 

And Edenbain drew 
His horse to the side of 
The roadway. He knew 
In the cart rolling past 
That a coffin was laid — 

But whose? the harsh outline 
Was hid by a plaid. 

The cart pass’d. The mourners 
Came marching behind: 

In front his own father, 
Grejdieaded, stone-blind; 

And far-removed cousins, 

His own stock and race, 

Came after in silence, 

A cloud on each face. 

Together walk’d Mugstot 
And fiery-soul’d Ord, 

Whom six days before 
He had left at his board. 


Edenbain 


213 


Behind came the red-bearded 
Sons of Tormore 
With whom he was drunk 
Scarce a fortnight before. 

“ Who is dead? Don’t they know me? ” 
Thought young Edenbain, 

With a weird terror gathering 
In heart and in brain. 

In a moment the black, 

Crawling funeral was gone, 

And he sat on his horse 
On the roadway alone. 

“ ’Tis the second sight,” cried he: 

“ ’Tis strange that I miss 
Myself ’mong the mourners ! 

Whose burial is this? 

My God! ’tis my own! ” 

And the blood left his heart, 

As he thought of the dead man 
That lay in the cart. 

The sun, ere he sank in 
His splendid sea^bath, 

Saw Edenbain spur through 
The golden-green strath. 


214 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 


Past a twilighted shepherd 
At watch rush'd a horse, 
With Edenbain dragged 
At the stirrup, a corse. 



TAM O’ SHANTER 
Robert Burns 

When chapman billies leave the street, 
And drouthy neebors, neebors meet, 

As market-days are wearing late, 

An’ folk begin to tak the gate ; 

While we sit bousing at the nappy, 

An’ getting fou and unco happy, 

We think na on the lang Scots miles, 

The mosses, waters, slaps, and styles, 

That lie between us and our hame, 

Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame, 
Gathering her brows like gathering storm, 
Nursing her wrath to keep it warm. 

215 


216 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

This truth fand honest Tam o’ Shanter, 
As he frae Ayr ae night did canter, 

( Auld Ayr, wham ne’er a town surpasses, 
For honest men and bonny lasses.) 

O Tam ! hadst thou but been sae wise, 

As ta’en thy ain wife Kate’s advice ! 

She tauld thee weel thou wast a skellum, 

A blethering, blustering, drunken blellum; 
That frae November till October, 

Ae market-day thou was na sober; 

That ilka melder, wi’ the miller, 

Thou sat as lang as thou had siller; 

That ev’ry naig was ca’d a shoe on, 

The smith and thee gat roaring f ou on ; 

That at the Lord’s house, ev’en on Sunday, 
Thou drank wi’ Kirkton Jean till Monday. 
She prophesy’d that, late or soon, 

Thou would be found deep drown’d in 
Doon; 

Or catch’d wi’ warlocks in the mirk, 

By Alloway’s auld, haunted kirk. 

Ah, gentle dames ! it gars me greet, 

To think how mony counsels sweet, 

How mony lengthen’d, sage advices, 

The husband frae the wife despises ! 


Tam O' Slianter 


217 


But to our tale: Ae market night, 

Tam had got planted unco right; 

Fast by an ingle, bleezing finely, 

Wi’ reaming swats, that drank divinely; 
And at his elbow, Souter Johnny, 

His ancient, trusty, drouthy crony; 

Tam lo’ed him like a vera brither; 

They had been fou for weeks thegither. 

The night drave on wi’ sangs and clatter; 
And ay the ale was growing better: 

The storm without might rair and rustle, 
Tam did na mind the storm a whistle. 

Care, mad to see a man sae happy, 

E’en drown’d himsel amang the nappy: 

As bees flee hame wi’ lades o’ treasure, 

The minutes wing’d their way wi’ pleasure; 
Kings may be blest, but Tam was glorious, 
O’er a’ the ills o’ life victorious ! 

But pleasures are like poppies spread: 
You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed; 

Or like the snow falls in the river, 

A moment white — then melts for ever; 

Or like the borealis race, 

That flit ere you can point their place ; 

Or like the rainbow’s lovely form 


218 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Evanishing amid the storm. — 

Nae man can tether time or tide; — 

The hour approaches Tam maun ride ; 

That hour, o’ night’s black arch the key- 
stane, 

That dreary hour Tam mounts his beast in; 
And sic a night he taks the road in, 

As ne’er poor sinner was abroad in. 

The wind blew as ’twad blawn its last; 

The rattling show’rs rose on the blast; 

The speedy gleams the darkness swallow’d; 
Loud, deep, andlang, the thunder bellow’d: 
That night, a child might understand, 

The Deil had business on his hand. 

Weel mounted on his gray mare, Meg, 

A better never lifted leg, 

Tam skelpit on thro’ dub and mire, 
Despising wind, and rain, and fire; 

Whiles holding fast his gude blue bonnet ; 
Whiles crooning o’er some auld Scots son- 
net; 

Whiles glow’ring round wi’ prudent cares, 
Lest bogles catch him unawares ; 
Kirk-Alloway was drawing nigh, 

Whare ghaists and houlets nightly cry. — 


Tam O' Shanter 


219 


By this time he was cross the ford, 

Whare in the snaw, the chapman smoor’d; 
And past the birks and meikle stane, 

.Whare drunken Charlie brak’s neck-bane; 
And thro’ the whins, and by the cairn, 

Whare hunters fand the murder’d bairn; 
And near the thorn, aboon the well, 

.Whare Mungo’s mither hang’d hersel. — 
Before him Doon pours all his floods ; 

The doubling storm roars thro’ the woods; 
The lightnings flash from pole to pole; 

Near and more near the thunders roll: 
When, glimmering thro’ the groaning trees, 
Kirk-Alloway seem’d in a bleeze; 

Thro’ ilka bore the beams were glancing; 
And loud resounded mirth and dancings — 

Inspiring bold John Barleycorn! 

What dangers thou canst make us scorn ! 
Wi’ tippenny, we fear nae evil; 

Wi’ usquabae, we’ll face the devil ! — 

The swats sae ream’d in Tammie’s noddle, 
Fair play, he car’d na deils a boddle. 

But Maggie stood, right sair astonish’d, 

Till, by the heel and hand admonish’d, 

She ventur’d forward on the light; 

And, vow ! Tam saw an unco sight ! 


220 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Warlocks and witches in a dance; 

Nae cotillion brent new frae France, 

But hornpipes, jigs, strathspeys, and reels, 
Put life and mettle in their heels. 

A winnock-bunker in the east, 

There sat auld Nick, in shape o’ beast; 

A towzie tyke, black, grim, and large, 

To gie them music was his charge: 

He screw’d the pipes and gart them skirl, 
Till roof and rafters a’ did dirl. — 


As Tammie glowr’d, amazed, and curious, 
The mirth and fun grew fast and furious: 
The piper loud and louder blew; 

The dancers quick and quicker flew; 

They reel’d, they set, they cross’d, they 
cleekit, 

Till ilka carlin swat and reekit. 

And coost her duddies to the wark. 

And linket at it in her sark! 


But Tam kend what was fu’brawlie: 
There was ae winsome wench and wawlie, 
That night enlisted in the core, 

Lang after kend on Carrick shore 


Tam O’ Shanter 


221 


(For mony a beast to dead she shot. 

And perish’d mony a bonny boat, 

And shook baith meikle corn and bear, 
And kept the countryside in fear.) 

Her cutty sark, o’ Paisley harn, 

That while a lassie she had worn, 

In longitude tho’ sorely scanty, 

It was her best, and she was vauntie. — 

Ah ! little kend thy reverend grannie. 

That sark she coft for her wee Nannie, 

Wi’ twa pund Scots (’twas a’ her riches). 
Wad ever grac’d a dance of witches! 

But here my Muse her wing maun cour; 
Sic flights are far beyond her pow’r; 

To sing how Nannie lap and flang, 

(A souple jade she was, and strang,) 

And how Tam stood, like ane bewitch’d, 
And thought his very een enrich’d; 

Even Satan glowr’d, and fidg’d fu’ fain, 
And hotch’d and blew wi’ might and main: 
Till first ae caper, syne anither, 

Tam tint his reason a’ thegither. 

And roars out, “ Weel done, Cutty-sark! ” 
And in an instant all was dark: 

And scarcely had he Maggie rallied. 

When out the hellish legion sallied. 


222 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

As bees bizz out wi’ angry fyke, 

When plundering herds assail their byke; 
As open pussie’s mortal foes, 

When, pop ! she starts before their nose ; 

As eager runs the market-crowd, 

When, “ Catch the thief! ” resounds aloud: 
So Maggie runs, the witches follow, 

Wi’ mony an eldritch skriech and hollo. 

Ah, Tam ! ah, Tam ! thou’ll get thy fairin’. 
In hell they’ll roast thee like a herrin’. 

In vain thy Kate awaits thy cornin’. 

Kate soon will be a wofu’ woman ! 

Now, do thy speedy utmost, Meg, 

And win the key-stane of the brig: 

There at them thou thy tail may toss, 

A running stream they darena cross. 

But ere the key-stane she could make. 

The fient a tail she had to shake! 

For Nannie, far before the rest, 

Hard upon noble Maggie prest. 

And flew at Tam wi’ furious ettle; 

But little wist she Maggie’s mettle — 

Ae spring brought off her master hale, 

But left behind her ain gray tail; 

The carlin claught her by the rump, 

And left poor Maggie scarce a stump. 


Tam O' Shanter 


223 


Now, wha this tale o’ truth shall read, 
Ilk man and mother’s son, take heed ; 
Whene’er to drink you are inclin’d, 

Or cutty-sarks run in your mind, 
Think! ye may buy the joys o’er dear, 
Remember Tam o’ Shanter’s mare. 


THE MYSTERY OF OLD DADDY’S 
WINDOW 

Charles Egbert Craddock 

Picture to yourself a wild ravine, gashing a 
mountain spur, and with here and there in its course 
abrupt descents. One of these is so deep and sheer 
that it might be called a precipice. 

High above it, from the steep slope on either 
hand, beetling crags jut out. Their summits al- 
most meet at one point, and thus the space below 
bears a rude resemblance to a huge window. 
Through it you might see the blue heights in the 
distance; or watch the clouds and sunshine shift 
over the sombre mountain across the narrow valley ; 
or mark, after the day has faded, how the great 
Scorpio draws its shining curves along the dark 
sky. 

One night Jonas Creyshaw sat alone in the porch 
of his log cabin, hard by on the slope of the ravine, 
smoking his pipe and gazing meditatively at “ Old 
Daddy’s Window.” The moon was full, and its 
rays fell aslant on one of the cliffs, while the rugged 
face of the opposite crag was in the shadow. 

Suddenly he became aware that something was 
224 


The Mystery of Old Daddy's Window 225 

moving about the precipice, the brink of which 
seems the sill of the window. Although this preci- 
pice is sheer and insurmountable, a dark figure had 
risen from it, and stood plainly defined against the 
cliff, which presented a comparatively smooth sur- 
face to the brilliant moonlight. 

Was it a shadow? he asked himself hastily. 

His eyes swept the ravine, only thirty feet wide 
at that point, which lies between the two crags 
whose jutting summits almost meet above it to 
form Old Daddy’s Window. 

There was no one visible to cast a shadow. 

It seemed as if the figure had unaccountably 
emerged from the sheer depths below. 

Only for a moment it stood motionless against 
the cliff. Then it flung its arms wildly above its 
head, and with a nimble spring disappeared — up- 
ward. 

Jonas Creyshaw watched it, his eyes distended, 
his face pallid, his pipe trembling in his shaking 
hand. ' 

“ Mirandy! ” he quavered faintly. 

His wife, a thin, ailing woman with pinched fea- 
tures and an uncertain eye, came to the door. 

“ Thar,” he faltered, pointing with his pipe-stem 
— “ jes’ a minit ago — I seen it! — a ghost riz up 
over the bluff inter Old Daddy’s Window ! ” 


226 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

The woman fell instantly into a panic. 

“ ’Twarn’t a-beckonin’, war it? ’Twarn’t a-beck- 
onin’ ? ’Kase ef it war, ye’ll hev ter die right 
straight ! That air a sure sign.” 

A little of Jonas Crey shaw’s pluck and common 
sense came back to him at this unpleasant announce- 
ment. 

“ Not on his say-so,” he stoutly averred. “ I 
ain’t a-goin’ ter do the beck nor the bid of enny 
onmannerly harnt ez hev tuk up the notion ter riz 
up over the bluff inter Old Daddy’s Window, an’ 
sot hisself ter motionin’ ter me.” 

He rose hastily, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, 
and followed his wife into the house. There he 
paused abruptly. 

The room was lighted by the fitful flicker of the 
fire, for the nights were still chilly, and an old man, 
almost decrepit, sat dozing in his chair by the 
hearth. 

“ Mirandy,” said Jonas Creyshaw in a whisper, 
“ ’pears like ter me ez father hed better not be let 
ter know ’bout’n that thar harnt. It mought skeer 
him so ez he couldn’t live another minit. He hev 
aged some lately — an’ he air weakly.” 

This was “ Old Daddy.” 

Before he had reached his thirtieth year, he was 
thus known, far and wide. 


The Mystery of Old Daddy's Window 227 

“ He air the man ez hev got a son,” the moun- 
taineers used to say in grinning explanation. “ Ter 
hear him brag ’bout’n that thar boy o’ his’n, ye’d 
think he war the only man in Tennessee ez ever 
hed a son.” 

Throughout all these years the name given in 
jocose banter had clung to him, and now, hallowed 
by ancient usage, it was accorded to him seriously, 
and had all the sonorous effect of a title. 

So they said nothing to Old Daddy, but pres- 
ently, when he had hobbled off to bed in the ad- 
joining shed-room, they fell to discussing their 
terror of the apparition, and thus it chanced that 
the two boys, Tad and Si, first made, as it were, the 
ghost’s acquaintance. 

Tad, a stalwart fellow of seventeen, sat listening 
spellbound before the glowing embers. Si, a wiry, 
active, tow-headed boy of twelve, perched with 
dangling legs on a chest, and looked now at the 
group by the fire, and now through the open door 
at the brilliant moonlight. 

“ Waal, sir,” he muttered, “ I’ll hev ter gin up 
the notion o’ gittin’ that comical young ow el, what 
I hev done set my heart onto. ’Kase ef I war ter 
fool round Old Daddy’s Window, now , whilst I 
war a-cotchin’ o’ the ow el, the ghost mought — cotch 
—me ! " 


228 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

A sorry ghost, to be sure, that has nothing better 
to do than to “ cotch ” him! But perhaps Si Crey- 
shaw is not the only one of us who has an inflated 
idea of his own importance. 

He was greatly awed, and he found many sug- 
gestions of supernatural presence about the familiar 
room. As the fire alternately flared and faded, the 
warping-bars looked as if they were dancing a 
clumsy measure. The handle of a portly jug re- 
sembled an arm stuck akimbo, and its cork, tilted 
askew, was like a hat set on one side; Si fancied 
there was a most unpleasant grimace below that hat. 
The churn-dasher, left upon a shelf to dry, was 
sardonically staring him out of countenance with 
its half-dozen eyes. The strings of red-jjepper 
pods and gourds and herbs, swinging from the 
rafters, rustled faintly; it somided to Si like a 
moan. 

He wished his father and mother would talk 
about some wholesome subject, like Spot’s new calf, 
for instance, instead of whispering about the mys- 
tery of Old Daddy’s Window. He wished Tad 
would not look, as he listened, so much like a ghost 
himself, with his starting eyes and pale, intent face. 
He even wished that the baby would wake up, and 
put some life into things with a good, healthy, rous- 
ing bawl. 


The Mystery of Old Baddy's Window 229 

But the baby slept peacefully on, and after so 
long a time Si Creyshaw slept too. 

With broad daylight his courage revived. He 
was no longer afraid to think of the ghost. In fact, 
he experienced a pleased importance in giving Old 
Daddy a minute account of the wonderful appari- 
tion, for he felt as if he had seen it. 

“ ’Pears ter me toler’ble comical, gran’ dad, ez 
they never tole ye a word ’bout’n it all,” he said in 
conclusion. “Ye mought hev liked ter seen the 
harnt. Ef he war’ ’quainted with ye when he lived 
in this life, he mought hev stopped an’ jowed so- 
ciable fur a spell.” 

How brave this small boy was in the cheerful 
sunshine ! 

Old Daddy hardly seemed impressed with the 
pleasure he had missed in losing a sociable “ jow ” 
with a ghostly crony. He sat silent, blinking in the 
sunshine that fell through the gourd-vines which 
clambered about the porch where Si had placed his 
chair. 

“ ’Twarn’t much of a sizable sperit,” Si declared; 
he seemed courageous enough now to measure the 
ghost like a tailor. “ It warn’t more’n four feet 
high, ez nigh ez dad could jedge. Toler’ble small 
fur a harnt ! ” 

Still the old man made no reply. His wrinkled 


230 More Mystery 'Tales for Boys and Girls 

hands were clasped on his stick. His white head, 
shaded by his limp black hat, was bent down close 
to them. There was a slow, pondering expression 
on his face, but an excited gleam in his eye. Pres- 
ently, he pointed backward toward a little unhewn 
log shanty that served as a barn, and rising with 
unwonted alacrity, he said to the boy: 

“ Fotch me the old beastis ! ” 

Silas Creyshaw stood amazed, for Old Daddy 
had not mounted a horse for twenty years. 

“ Studyin’ ’bout’n the harnt so much hev teched 
him in the head,” the small boy concluded. Then 
he made an excuse, for he knew his grandfather was 
too old and feeble to undertake safely a solitary 
jaunt on horseback. 

“ I war tole not ter leave ye fur a minit, gran’- 
dad. I war ter stay nigh ye an’ mind yer bid.” 

“ That’s my bid!” said the old man sternly. 
“ Fotch the beastis.” 

There was no one else about the place. Jonas 
Creyshaw had gone fishing shortly after daybreak. 
His wife had trudged off to her sister’s house down 
in the cove, and had taken the baby with her. Tad 
was ploughing in the cornfield on the other side of 
the ravine. Si had no advice, and he had been 
brought up to think that Old Daddy’s word was 
law. 


The Mystery of Old Daddy's Window 231 

When the old man, mounted at last, was jogging 
up the road, Tad chanced to come to the house for 
a bit of rope to mend the plough-gear. He saw, far 
up the leafy vista, the departing cavalier. He cast 
a look of amazed reproach upon Si. Then, speech- 
less with astonishment, he silently pointed at the 
distant figure. 

Si was a logician. 

“ I never lef him ” he said. “ He lef me” 

“ Ye oughter rej’ice in yer whole bones while ye 
hev got ’em,” Tad returned, with withering sar- 
casm. “ When dad kerns home, some of ’em’ll git 
bruk, sure. Warn’t ye tole not ter leave him fur 
nuthin\ ye trifling shoat! ” 

“ He lef me! ” Si stoutly maintained. 

Meantime, Old Daddy journeyed on. 

Except for the wonderful mountain air, the set- 
tlement, three miles distant, had nothing about it 
to indicate its elevation. It was far from the cliffs, 
and there was no view. It was simply a little hollow 
of a clearing scooped out among the immense for- 
ests. When the mountaineers clear land, they do it 
effectually. Not a tree was left to embellish the 
yards of any of the four or five little log huts that 
constituted the hamlet, and the glare was intense. 

As six or eight loungers sat smoking about the 
door of the store, there was nothing to intercept 


232 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

their astonished view of Old Daddy when he sud- 
denly appeared out of the gloomy forest, blinking 
in the sun and bent half double with fatigue. 

Even the rudest and coarsest of these moun- 
taineers accord a praiseworthy deference to the 
aged among them. Old Daddy was held in reveren- 
tial estimation at home, and was well accustomed to 
the respect shown him now, when, for the first time 
in many years, he had chosen to jog abroad. They 
helped him to dismount, and carried him bodily 
into the store. After he had tilted his chair back 
against the rude counter, he looked around with an 
important face upon the attentive group. 

“ My son,” shrilly piped out Old Daddy, — “ my 
son air the strongest man ever seen, sence Sam- 
son!” 

“ I hev always hearn that say in’, Old Daddy,” 
acquiesced an elderly codger, who, by reason of 
“ rheumatics,” made no pretension to muscle. 

A gigantic young blacksmith looked down at his 
corded hammer-arm, but said nothing. 

A fly — several flies — buzzed about the sorghum 
barrel. 

“ My son,” shrilly piped out Old Daddy, — “ my 
son air the bes’ shot on this hyar mounting.” 

“ That’s a true word, Old Daddy,” assented the 
schoolmaster, who had ceased to be a Nimrod since 


The Mystery of Old Daddy's Window 233 

devoting himself to teaching the young idea how to 
shoot. 

The hunters smoked in solemn silence. 

The shadow of a cloud drifted along the bare 
sandy stretch of the clearing. 

“ My son,” shrilly piped out Old Daddy, — “ my 
son hev got the peartest boys in Tennessee.” 

“ I’ll gin ye that up, Old Daddy/’ cheerfully 
agreed the miller, whose family consisted of two 
small “ daughters.” 

The fathers of other “ peart boys ” cleared their 
throats uneasily, but finally subsided without of- 
fering contradiction. 

A jay-bird alighted on a blackberry bush out- 
side, fluttered all his blue and white feathers, 
screamed harshly, bobbed his crested head, and was 
off on his gay wings. 

“ My son,” shrilly piped out Old Daddy, — “ my 
son hev been gifted with the sight o’ what no other 
man on this mounting hev ever viewed.” 

The group sat amazed, expectant. But the old 
man preserved a stately silence. Only when the 
storekeeper eagerly insisted, “ What hev Jonas 
seen? what war he gin ter view? ” did Old Daddy 
bring the fore legs of the chair down with a thump, 
lean forward, and mysteriously pipe out like a su- 
perannuated cricket: 


234 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ My son, — my son hev seen a hamt, what riz up 
over the bluff a-purpose! ” 

“ Whar ’bouts?” “When?” “Waal, sir! ” 
arose in varied clamors. 

So the proud old man told the story he had jour- 
neyed three laborious miles to spread. It had no 
terrors for him, so completely was fear swallowed 
up in admiration of his wonderful son, who had 
added to his other perfections the gift of seeing 
ghosts. 

The men discussed it eagerly. There were some 
jokes cracked — as it was still broad noonday — and 
at one of these Old Daddy took great offense, more 
perhaps because the disrespect was offered to his 
son rather than to himself. 

“ Jes’ gin Jonas the word from me,” said the 
young blacksmith, meaning no harm and laughing 
good-naturedly, “ ez I kin tell him percisely what 
makes him see harnts; it air drinkin’ so much o’ 
this onhealthy whiskey, what hain’t got no tax paid 
onto it. I looks ter see him jes’ a-staggerin’ the 
nex’ time I comes up with him.” 

Old Daddy rose with affronted dignity. 

“ My son,” he declared vehemently, — “ my son 
ain’t gin over ter drinkin’ whiskey, tax or no tax. 
An’ he ain’t got no call ter stagger — like some 
folks! " 


The Mystery of Old Daddy's Window 23 5 

And despite all apology and protest, he left the 
house in a huff. 

His old bones ached with the unwonted exercise, 
and were rudely jarred by the rough roads and the 
awful gaits of his ancient steed. The sun was hot, 
and so was his heart, and when he reached home, 
infinitely fatigued and querulous, he gave his son 
a sorry account of his reception at the store. As 
he concluded, saying that five of the men had sent 
word that they would be at Jonas Creyshaw’s house 
at moonrise “ ter holp him see the harnt,” his son’s 
brow darkened, and he strode heavily out of the 
room. 

He usually exhibited in a high degree the 
hospitality characteristic of these mountaineers, 
but now it had given way to a still stronger in- 
stinct. 

“ Si,” he said, coming suddenly upon the boy, 
“ put out right now fur Bently’s store at the settle- 
mint, an’ tell them sneaks ez hang round thar ter 
sarch round thar own houses fur harnts, ef they 
hanker ter see enny harnts. Ef they hev got the 
insurance ter kem hyar they’ll see wusser sights ’n 
enny harnts. Tell ’em I ain’t a-goin’ ter ’low no 
man ter cross my doorstep ez don’t show Old 
Daddy the right medjure o’ respec’. They’d better 
keep out’n my way ginerally.” 


236 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

So with this bellicose message Si set out. But 
an unlucky idea occurred to him as he went plod- 
ding along the sandy road. 

“ Whilst I’m a-goin’ on this Hyar harnt’s yer- 
rand ” The logical Si brought up with a 

shiver. 

“ I went ter say — whilst I’m a-goin’ on this hyar 
yerrand fur the harnt ” This was as bad. 

“ Whilst,” he qualified once more, “ I’m a-goin’ 
on this hyar yerrand J boufn the harnt, I mought ez 
well skeet off in them deep woods a piece ter see ef 
enny wild cherries air ripe on that tree by the 
spring. I’ll hev plenty o’ time.” 

But even Si could not persuade himself that the 
cherries were ripe, and he stood for a moment un- 
der the tree, staring disconsolately at the distant 
blue ridges shimmering through the heated air. 
The sunlight was motionless, languid; it seemed 
asleep. The drowsy drone of insects filled the 
forest. As Si threw himself down to rest on the 
rocky brink of the mountain, a grasshopper sprang 
away suddenly, high into the air, with an agility 
that suggested to him the chorus of a song, which 
he began to sing in a loud and self-sufficient voice: 

66 The grasshopper said — 4 Now, don’t ye see 
Thar’s mighty few dancers sech ez me — 

Sech ez me ! — Sech ez me ! ’ ” 


The Mystery of Old Daddy's Window 237 

This reminded Si of his own capabilities as a 
dancer. He rose and began to caper nimbly, ex- 
ecuting a series of steps that were singularly swift, 
spry, and unexpected, — a good deal on the grass- 
hopper’s method. His tattered black hat bobbed 
up and down on his tow head; his brown jeans 
trousers, so loose on his lean legs, flapped about 
hilariously; his bare heels flew out right and left; 
he snapped his fingers to mark the time; now and 
then he stuck his arms akimbo, and cut what he 
called the “ widgeon-ping.” But his freckled face 
was as grave as ever, and all the time that he danced 
he sang: 

In the middle o’ the night the rain kem down, 

An 5 gin the corn a fraish start out’n the ground, 
An 5 I thought nex’ day ez I stood in the door, 

That sassy bug mus’ be drownded sure ! 

But thar war Goggle-eyes, peart an’ gay, 
Twangin’ an’ a- tunin’ up — 4 Now, dance away! 

Ye may sarch night an’ day ez a constancy 
An’ ye won’t find a fiddler sech ez me ! 

Sech ez me l — Sech ez me ! ’ ” 

As he sank back exhausted upon the ground, a 
new aspect of the scene caught his attention. 

Those blue mountains were purpling — there was 
an ever-deepening flush in the west. It was close 


238 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

upon sunset, and while he had wasted the time, the 
five men to whom his father had sent that stern 
message forbidding them to come to his house were 
perhaps on their way thither, with every expecta- 
tion of a cordial welcome. There might be a row — 
even a fight — and all because he had loitered. 

How he tore out of the brambly woods ! How he 
pounded along the sandy road! But when he 
reached the settlement close upon nightfall, the 
storekeeper’s wife told him that the men had gone 
long ago. 

“ They war powerful special ter git off early,” 
she added, “ ’kase they wanted ter be thar ’fore Old 
Daddy drapped off ter sleep. Some o’ them fool- 
ish, slack-jawed boys ter the store ter-day riled the 
old man’s feelin’s, an’ they ’lowed ter patch up the 
peace with him, an’ let him an’ Jonas know ez they 
never meant no harm.” 

This suggestion buoyed up the boy’s heart to 
some degree as he toiled along the “ short cut ” 
homeward through the heavy shades of the gloomy 
woods and the mystic effects of the red rising moon. 
But he was not altogether without anxiety until, as 
he drew within sight of the log cabin on the slope 
of the ravine, he heard Old Daddy piping pacifi- 
cally to the guests about “ my son,” and Jonas 
Creyshaw’s jolly laughter. 


The Mystery of Old Daddy's Window 239 

The moon was golden now ; Si could see its bril- 
liant shafts of light strike aslant upon the smooth 
surface of the cliff that formed the opposite side 
of Old Daddy’s Window. He stopped short in the 
deep shadow of the more rugged crag. The vines 
and bushes that draped its many jagged ledges 
dripped with dew. The boughs of an old oak, which 
grew close by, swayed gently in the breeze. Hid- 
den by its huge bole, Si cast an apprehensive glance 
toward the house where his elders sat. 

Certainly no one was thinking of him now. 

“ This air my chance fur that young ow el — ef 
ever,” he said to himself. 

The owl’s nest was in the hollow of the tree. The 
trunk was far too bulky to admit of climbing, and 
the lowest branches were well out of the boy’s reach. 
Some thirty feet from the ground, however, one of 
the boughs touched the crag. By clambering up 
its rugged, irregular ledges, making a zigzag across 
its whole breadth to the right and then a similar 
zigzag to the left, Si might gain a position which 
would enable him to clutch this bough of the tree. 
Thence he could scramble along to the owl’s strong- 
hold. 

He hesitated. He knew his elders would disap- 
prove of so reckless an undertaking as climbing 
about Old Daddy’s Window, for in venturing to- 


240 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

ward its outer* verge, a false step, a crumbling 
ledge, the snapping of a vine, would fling him down 
the sheer precipice into the depths below. 

His hankering for a pet owl had nevertheless 
brought him here more than once. It was only 
yesterday evening — before he had heard of the 
ghost’s appearance, however, — that he had made 
his last futile attempt. 

He looked up doubtfully. “ I ain’t ez strong ez 
— ez some folks,” he admitted. 

“ But then, come ter think of it,” he argued 
astutely, “ I don’t weigh nuthin’ sca’cely, an’ thar 
ain’t much of me ter hev ter haul up thar.” 

He flung off his hat, he laid his wiry hands upon 
the wild grape-vines, he felt with his bare feet for 
the familiar niches and jagged edges, and up he 
went, working steadily to the right, across the broad 
face of the cliff. 

Its heavy shadow concealed him from view. 
Only one ledge, at the extreme verge of the crag, 
jutted out into the full moonbeams. But this, by 
reason of the intervening bushes and vines, could 
not be seen by those who sat in the cabin porch on 
the slope of the ravine, and he was glad to have 
light just here, for it was the most perilous point 
of his enterprise. By deft scrambling, however, he 
succeeded in getting on the moonlit ledge. 


The Mystery of Old Daddy's Window 241 

“I dumb like a painter!” he declared tri- 
umphantly. 

He rested there for a moment before attempting 
to reach the vines high up on the left hand, which 
he must grasp in order to draw himself up into the 
shadowy niche in the rock, and began his zigzag 
course back again across the face of the cliff to the 
projecting bough of the tree. 

But suddenly, as he still stood motionless on the 
ledge in the full radiance of the moon, the clamor 
of frightened voices sounded at the house. Until 
now he had forgotten all about the ghost. He 
turned, horror-stricken. 

There was the frightful thing, plainly defined 
against the smooth surface of the opposite cliff — 
some thirty feet distant — that formed the other side 
of Old Daddy’s Window. 

And certainly there are mighty few dancers sucfi 
as that ghost ! It lunged actively toward the preci- 
pice. It suddenly dashed wildly back — gyrating 
continually with singularly nimble feet, flinging 
wiry arms aloft and maintaining a sinister silence, 
while the frightened clamor at the house grew ever 
louder and more shrill. 

Several minutes elapsed before Si recognized 
something peculiarly familiar in the ghost’s wiry 
nimbleness — before he realized that the shadow of! 


242 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

the cliff on which he stood reached across the ravine 
to the base of the opposite cliff, and that the figure 
which had caused so much alarm was only his own 
shadow cast upon its perpendicular surface. 

He stopped short in those antics which had been 
induced by mortal terror; of course, his shadow, 
too, was still instantly. It stood upon the brink of 
the precipice which seems the sill of Old Daddy’s 
Window, and showed distinctly on the smooth face 
of the cliff opposite to him. 

He understood, after a moment’s reflection, how 
it was that as he had climbed up on the ledge in the 
full moonlight his shadow had seemed to rise grad- 
ually from the vague depths below the insurmount- 
able precipice. 

He sprang nimbly upward to seize the vines that 
shielded him from the observation of the ghost-seers 
on the cabin porch, and as he caught them and 
swung himself suddenly from the moonlit ledge into 
the gloomy shade, he noticed that his shadow 
seemed to fling its arms wildly above its head, and 
disappeared upward. 

“ That air jes’ what dad seen las’ night when I 
war down hyar afore, a-figurin’ ter ketch that 
thar leetle ow el ” he said to himself when he had 
reached the tree and sat in a crotch, panting and 
excited. 


The Mystery of Old Baddy's Window 243 

After a moment, regardless of the coveted owl, 
he swung down from branch to branch, dropped 
easily from the lowest upon the ground, picked up 
his hat, and prepared to skulk along the “ short 
cut,” strike the road, and come home by that route 
as if he had just returned from the settlement. 

“ ’Kase,” he argued sagely, “ ef them skeered- 
ter-death grown folks war ter find out ez I war the 
harnt — I mean ez the hamt war me — ennyhow,” he 
concluded desperately, “ I’d ketch it — sure!” 

So impressed was he with this idea that he dis- 
creetly held his tongue. 

And from that day to this, Jonas Creyshaw and 
his friends have been unable to solve the mystery of 
Old Daddy’s Window. 


THE DREAM OF MAXEN WLEDIG 1 
A Welsh Legend 

Maxen Wledig was emperor of Rome; and he 
was a comelier man and a better and a wiser, than 
any emperor that had been before him. And one 
day he held a council of kings; and he said to his 
friends, 4 4 1 desire to go to-morrow to hunt.” And 
the next day in the morning he set forth with his 
retinue, and came to the valley of the river that 
flowed toward Rome. And he hunted through the 
valley until mid-day. And with him also were two 
and thirty crowned kings, that were his vassals. 
Not for the delight of hunting went the emperor 
with them, but to put himself on equal terms with 
those kings. 

And the sun was high in the sky over their heads, 
and the heat was great. And sleep came upon 
Maxen Wledig. And his attendants stood and 
set up their shields around him upon the shafts of 
their spears to protect him from the sun, and they 
placed a gold enameled shield under his head; and 
so Maxen slept. 

And he saw a dream. And this is the dream that 

1 Maxen Wledig is the Emperor Maximus who was in Britain 
with his army when he obtained the throne,. 383 A. D. He is 
the subject of many Welsh legends. 

244 


The Dream of Maxen Wledig 24 5 

Ke saw. He was journeying along the valley of the 
river toward its source ; and he came to the highest 
mountain in the world. And he thought that the 
mountain was as high as the sky. And when he 
came over the mountain, it seemed to him that he 
went through the fairest and most level regions that 
man ever yet beheld, on the other side of the moun- 
tain. And he saw large and mighty rivers descend- 
ing from the mountain to the sea, and toward the 
mouths of the rivers he proceeded. And as he jour- 
neyed thus he came to the mouth of the largest river 
ever seen. And he beheld a great city at the en- 
trance of the river, and a vast castle in the city, and 
he saw many high towers of various colors in the 
castle. And he saw a fleet at the mouth of the 
river, the largest ever seen. And he saw one ship 
among the fleet; larger was it by far, and fairer, 
than all the others. Of such part of the ship as he 
could see above the water, one plank was gilded 
and the other silvered over. He saw a bridge of 
the bone of the whale from the ship to the land, and 
he thought that he went along the bridge, and came 
into the ship. And a sail was hoisted on the ship, 
and along the sea and the ocean was it borne. Then 
it seemed that he came to the fairest island in the 
whole world, and he traversed the island from sea 
to sea, even to the farthest shore of the island. Val- 


246 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

leys he saw, and steeps, and rocks of wondrous 
height, and rugged precipices. Never yet saw he 
the like. And thence he beheld an island in the sea, ; 
facing this rugged land. And between him and this 
island was a country of which the plain was as large 
as the sea, the mountain as vast as the wood. And 
from the mountain he saw a river that flowed 
through the land, and fell into the sea. And at the 
mouth of the river he beheld a castle, the fairest that 
man ever saw; and the gate of the castle was open, 
and he went into the castle. And in the castle he 
saw a fair hall, of which the roof seemed to be all 
gold ; the walls of the hall seemed to be entirely of 
glittering precious gems, the doors all seemed to 
be of gold. Golden seats he saw in the hall, and 
silver tables. And on a seat opposite to him he 
beheld two auburn-haired youths playing at chess. 
He saw a silver board for the chess, and golden 
pieces thereon. The garments of the youths were 
of jet-black satin; and chaplets of ruddy gold 
bound their hair, whereon were sparkling jewels of 
great price, rubies, and gems alternately with im- 
perial stones; buskins of new Cordovan leather on 
their feet, fastened by slides of red gold. 

And beside a pillar in the hall he saw a hoary- 
Kieaded man in a chair of ivory, with the figures of 
two eagles of ruddy gold thereon. Bracelets of 


247 


The Dream of Maocen Wledig 

gold were upon his arms, and many rings were on 
his hands, and a golden torque about his neck ; and 
his hair was bound with a golden diadem. He was 
of powerful aspect. A chessboard of gold was be- 
fore him, and a rod of gold, and a steel file in his 
hand. And he was carving out chessmen. 

And he saw a maiden sitting before him in a chair 
of ruddy gold. Not more easy than to gaze upon 
the sun when brightest was it to look upon her by 
reason of her beauty. A vest of white silk was 
upon the maiden, with clasps of red gold at the 
breast; and a surcoat of gold tissue upon her, and 
a frontlet of red gold upon her head, and rubies and 
gems were in the frontlet, alternating with pearls 
and imperial stones. And a girdle of ruddy gold 
was around her. She was the fairest sight that 
man ever beheld. 

The maiden arose from her chair before him, and 
they two sat down together in the chair of gold; 
and the chair was not less roomy for them both than 
for the maiden alone. And behold, through the 
chafing of the dogs at their leashing, and the clash- 
ing of the shields as they struck against each other, 
and the beating together of the shafts of the spears, 
and the neighing of the horses and their prancing, 
the emperor awoke. 

And when he awoke, nor spirit nor existence was 


248 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

left him, because of the maiden whom he had seen 
in his sleep ; for the love of the maiden pervaded his 
whole frame. Then his household spake unto him. 
“ Lord,” said they, “ is it not past the time for thee 
to take thy food? ” Thereupon the emperor 
mounted his palfrey, the saddest man that mortal 
ever saw, and went forth toward Rome. 

And thus he was during the space of a week. 
When they of the household went to drink wine and 
mead out of golden vessels, he went not with any 
of them. When they went to listen to songs and 
tales, he went not with them there; neither could he 
be persuaded to do anything but sleep. And as 
often as he slept, he beheld in his dreams the maiden 
he loved best ; but except when he slept he saw noth- 
ing of her; for he knew not where in the world she 
was. 

One day the page of the chamber spake unto him; 
now, although he was page of the chamber, he was 
king of the Romans. “ Lord,” said he, “ all the 
people revile thee.” 

“ Wherefore do they revile me? ” asked the em- 
peror. 

“ Because they can get neither message nor an- 
swer from thee, as men should have from their lord. 
This is the cause why thou art spoken evil of.” 

“ Youth,” said the emperor, “ do thou bring unto 


The Dream of Maocen Wledig 249 

me the wise men of Rome, and I will tell them 
wherefore I am sorrowful.” 

Then the wise men of Rome were brought to the 
emperor, and he spake to them. “ Sages of Rome,” 
said he, “ I have seen a dream. And in the dream 
I beheld a maiden, and because of the maiden is 
there neither life, nor spirit, nor existence within 
me.” 

“ Lord,” they answered, “ since thou judgest us 
worthy to counsel thee, we will give thee counsel. 
And this is our counsel: that thou send messengers 
for three years to the three parts of the world to 
seek for thy dream. And as thou knowest not what 
day or what night good news may come to thee, the 
hope thereof will support thee.” 

So the messengers journeyed for the space of a 
year, wandering about the world, and seeking tid- 
ings concerning his dream. But when they came 
back at the end of the year they knew not one word 
more than they did the day they set forth. And 
then was the emperor exceeding sorrowful; for he 
thought that he should never have tidings of her 
whom best he loved. 

Then spoke the king of the Romans unto the 
emperor. “ Lord,” said he, “ go forth to hunt by 
the way thou didst seem to go, whether it were to 
the east or to the west.” 


250 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

So the emperor went forth to the hunt, and he 
came to the bank of the river. “ Behold,” said he, 
“ this is where I was when I saw the dream, and I 
went toward the source of the river westward.” 

And thereupon thirteen messengers of the em- 
peror’s set forth; and before them they saw a high 
mountain, which seemed to them to touch the sky. 
Now this was the guise in which the messengers 
journeyed; one sleeve was on the cap of each of 
them in front, as a sign that they were messengers, 
in order that through what hostile land soever they 
might pass no harm might be done them. And 
when they were come over this mountain, they be- 
held vast plains, and large rivers flowing there 
through. “ Behold,” said they, “ the land which 
our master saw.” 

And they went along the mouths of the rivers, 
until they came to the mighty river which they saw 
flowing to the sea, and the vast city, and the many- 
colored high towers in the castle. They saw the 
largest fleet in the world in the harbor of the river, 
and one ship that was larger than any of the others. 
“ Behold again,” said they, “ the dream that our 
master saw.” And in the great ship they crossed 
the sea, and came to the Island of Britain. And 
they traversed the island until they came to Snow- 
don. “ Behold,” said they, “ the rugged land that 


251 


The Dream of Maocen Wledig 

our master saw.” And they went forward until 
they saw Anglesey before them, and until they saw 
Arvon likewise. “ Behold,” said they, “ the land our 
master saw in his sleep.” And they saw Aber Sain, 
and a castle at the mouth of the river. The portal 
of the castle saw they open, and into the castle they 
went, and they saw a hall in the castle. Then said 
they, “ Behold the hall which he saw in his sleep.” 
They went into the hall, and they beheld two youths 
playing at chess on the golden bench. And they 
beheld the hoary-headed man beside the pillar, in 
the ivory chair, carving chessmen. And they be- 
held the maiden sitting on a chair of ruddy gold. 

The messengers bent down upon their knees. 
“ Empress of Rome, all hail! ” 

“ Ha, gentles,” said the maiden, “ ye bear the 
seeming of honorable men, and the badge of en- 
voys: what mockery is this ye do to me? ” 

“We mock thee not, lady; but the emperor of 
Rome hath seen thee in his sleep, and he has neither 
life nor spirit left because of thee. Thou shalt have 
of us therefore the choice, lady, — whether thou wilt 
go with us and be made empress of Rome, or that 
the emperor come hither and take thee for his 
wife? ” 

“ Ha, lords,” said the maiden, “ I will not deny 
what ye say, neither will I believe it too well. If 


252 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

the emperor love me, let him come here to seek 
me.” 

And by day and night the messengers hied them 
back. And when their horses failed, they bought 
other fresh ones. And when they came to Rome, 
they saluted the emperor, and asked their boon, 
which was given to them according as they named 
it. “ We will be thy guides, lord,” said they, “ over 
sea and over land, to the place where is the woman 
whom best thou lovest; for we know her name, and 
her kindred and her race.” 

And immediately the emperor set forth with his 
army. And these men were his guides. Toward 
the Island of Britain they went over the sea and 
the deep. And he conquered the island from Beli 
the son of Manogan, and his sons, and drove them 
to the sea, and went forward even unto Arvon. 
And the emperor knew the land when he saw it. 
And when he beheld the castle of Aber Sain, 
“ Look yonder,” said he, “ there is the castle 
wherein I saw the damsel whom I best love.” And 
he went forward into the castle and into the hall, 
and there he saw Kynan the son of Eudav, and 
Adeon the son of Eudav, playing at chess. And 
he saw Eudav the son of Caradawc sitting on a 
chair of ivory, carving chessmen. And the maiden 
whom he had beheld in his sleep he saw sitting on a v 


253 


The Dream of Maocen Wledig 

chair of gold. “ Empress of Rome/’ said he, “ all 
hail! ” And the emperor threw his arms about her 
neck; and she became his bride. 

And this dream is called the Dream of Maxen 
Wledig, emperor of Rome. And here it ends. 



GENSERIC 
Owen Meredith 

Genseric, King of the Vandals, who, having laid 
waste seven lands, 

From Tripolis far as Tangier, from the sea to the 
great desert sands, 

Was lord of the Moor and the African, — thirsting 
anon for new slaughter, 

Sail’d out of Carthage, and sail’d o’er the Mediter- 
ranean water; 

Plunder’d Palermo, seiz’d Sicily, sack’d the Lu- 
canian coast. 

And paused, and said, laughing, “ Where next? ” 
Then there came to the Vandal a Ghost 
254 


Genseric 


2 55 


From the Shadowy Land that lies hid and unknown 
in the Darkness Below. 

And answered, “ To Rome! ” 

Said the King to the Ghost, “ And whose envoy 
art thou? 

Whence com’st thou? and name me his name that 
hath sent thee: and say what is thine.” 

“ From far: and His name that hath sent me is 
God,” the Ghost answered, “ and mine 

Was Hannibal once, ere thou wast: and the name 
that I now have is Fate. 

But arise, and be swift, and return. For God 
waits, and the moment is late.” 

And, “ I go,” said the Vandal. And went. 

When at last to the gates he was come, 

Loud he knock’d with his fierce iron fist. And full 
drowsily answer’d him Rome. 

“ Who is it that knocketh so loud? Get thee hence. 
Let me be. For ’tis late.” 

“ Thou art wanted,” cried Genseric. “ Open! His 
name that hath sent me is Fate, 

And mine, who knock late, Retribution.” 

Rome gave him her glorious things ; 

The keys she had conquer’d from kingdoms: the 
crowns she had wrested from kings : 

And Genseric bore them away into Carthage, 
avenged thus on Rome; 


256 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

And paused, and said, laughing, “ Where next? ” 
And again the Ghost answer’d him, “ Home! 

For now God doth need thee no longer.” 

“ Where leadest thou me by the hand? ” 

Cried the King to the Ghost. And the Ghost an- 
swer’d, “ Into the Shadowy Land.” 


FRIAR BACON’S BRAZEN HEAD 
Abby Sage Richardson 

In a vast and ancient room, whose appliances de- 
noted the abode of the scholar and philosopher, sat 
the learned and famous friar, Roger Bacon. Be- 
side him, a dusty table was thickly strewn with 
scrolls of parchment, rich with age and erudition, 
while a large chest, heavily barred and bolted, was 
filled with other treasures in manuscript, each worth 
more than its weight in virgin gold. 

At the farther end of the room a vast chimney, 
with smoky furnaces and crucibles, containing 
crude and half-smelted ores, and all the various 
properties of the alchemist, occupied one side of the 
apartment. In one corner, a huge iron mortar, 
shielded by screens of metal from contact with any 
spark which might fly from the furnaces, was filled 
with an inodorous mixture of brimstone and salt- 
peter, and a black dust which looked like powdered 
charcoal. Everywhere, on floor and table, stood 
such rude instruments to aid in chemistry and as- 
tronomy as the time afforded, while all about were 
such evidences of work and study as made the place 
257 


258 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

seem as much like the workshop of the artisan as 
the library of the scholar. 

Stretched across the upper end of the apartment, 
a heavy green curtain fell in broken folds over some 
object which it was intended to conceal. Before 
this curtain sat the great necromancer, of whose art 
all England spoke in whispered wonder, and with 
bated breath, “ the learned Friar Bacon of Ox- 
ford.” 

No longer an inmate of the college from whose 
walls his suspected magic had caused him to be 
driven forth, he dwelt solitary among the surround- 
ing rustics who feared and shunned him, and in se- 
cret wrought those mysterious works which made 
him dreaded among men. 

He was now only a little past middle life, a man 
of commanding figure and noble head, which 
seemed heavy with the weight of knowledge it car- 
ried, and now dropped wearily upon his hands as 
he sat steeped in thought. 

His reverie was broken by the entrance of his 
servant Miles, the only retainer he could keep about 
him, a half-witted, faithful fellow, who clung grate- 
fully to the hand which fed him. 

“ I cry you mercy, good master,” said Miles 
hastily entering, “ but I could not stay upon cere- 
mony. A lord is without the door, asking entrance 


Friar Bacons Brazen Head 259 

to you. It is a fellow in a scarlet coat, and wonder- 
ful fine otherwise. He declares that he is from 
Oxford, and will have speech with you. And al- 
though I said nobody could enter, he will come in, 
whether I will or no. At which I, fearing he might 
be the Evil One himself, took to my heels to tell 
thee about him.” 

“ Let him come in,” answered the friar, roused 
by the servant’s long speech from his deep abstrac- 
tion. “ It is Clement, the cardinal, the Pope’s 
legate to England. Stay, Miles, throw a cloth over 
the pile of manuscripts yonder. Pull out that cur- 
tain straight. Now give me the book of the Gos- 
pels. It is enough. Show the cardinal hither.” 

A moment later, and the Cardinal Clement, him- 
self the next successor to the papal throne, entered 
the apartment. 

“ Well, friar, at last we have found your secret 
hiding-place. It is no easy journey hither, and the 
road is as hard and narrow as that which leads to 
Paradise.” 

“ I am sorry for the trouble your lordship took 
in coming, and should have been happy if it might 
have been spared you.” 

“ Which means, so I take it, good friar, that you 
are not glad at my coming. But, believe me, I 
come with no evil intent, nor for anything except 


260 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

friendship. I know how they have treated thee at 
Oxford, and in good earnest I have been always 
sorry for it. Learning is not so plenty, that it 
should be put down; and from what I know of thy 
wonderful inventions, they are not those that the 
Devil teaches his followers, but always of good 
service to the cause of Truth and the true Church. 
I pray thee do not distrust my motive. I come in 
friendly guise, unattended as thou seest, and with 
no desire but to be instructed in some of thy magic 
discoveries, and see what they may avail to science.” 

“ My discoveries are naught,” answered the friar, 
still keeping up the reserved manner he had worn 
since the entrance of his visitor. “ Thou hast heard 
of the magic powder which has so frightened the 
learned magnates of the college that they drove me 
outside their walls. It is but a composition of sim- 
ple substances, which, without any magic art, when 
touched with a spark, will give forth a semblance of 
lightning and thunder. If thou wishest, I can, in 
a few minutes, show thee the secret of it.” 

“ No, no, good friar,” returned the cardinal, 
shrinking away a little uneasily from the mortar in 
the corner, which Bacon approached. “ I trust thy 
word, and I am no fool to believe stories of any 
wizard’s craft. But there is another matter of 
which I come to inquire of thee. Thou hast a huge 


Friar Bacons Brazen Head 261 

head, they tell me, of which thou makest a familiar, 
that tells thee strange secrets, and foretells events 
that can affect the fate of nations. Tell me of this. 
On the faith of a priest and a gentleman, I ask but 
for love of science. And ” (here the priest’s voice 
sank lower) “ thou hast heard that Pope Urban 
grows feeble. It is in all men’s mouths in Rome, 
that the cardinal legate of England will be the next 
high pontiff of the Church. I trust thy honor in 
telling this, and tell thee also, that if Clement of 
Narbonne be made the Holy Father of the Church, 
it will be his first mission to do away with the nar- 
row bigotry regarding science, and with his own 
royal hand confer honors on those who make Learn- 
ing their mistress. Now do you trust my friend- 
ship, good Friar Bacon? ” 

“ My lord cardinal, I do trust you,” answered 
Bacon, whose keen eye had closely scanned the fea- 
tures of the priest while he had spoken. “ But it 
becometh us men of letters to be mistrustful. We 
remember that many who were not heretics have 
been invited into the presence of the Inquisition, 
and have not returned thence. But I trust your 
word, and I will betray to you my mystery.” 

Rising hastily, the friar drew aside the green cur- 
tain which had hitherto concealed some object from 
the view. The cardinal turned to face it, and then 


262 More Mystery Tales f or Boys and Girls 

stepped back, awestruck at the sight which the 
withdrawing of the drapery revealed. Placed on a 
rude pedestal which stood several feet above the 
floor, stood a massive brazen head, with grand, im- 
passive face, and an expression of such dignified 
grandeur, such commanding repose, that it was as 
if the haughty features of some Grecian god had 
been revealed to the awestruck gaze of the car- 
dinal. 

As he gazed, from the deep-set but luminous 
eyes, true Jovine lightning seemed to issue, and a 
deep rumbling sound like distant thunder shook the 
floor on which they stood. 

The legate involuntarily crossed himself, and 
then, looking at Bacon, who slowly dropped the 
curtain which concealed the head, he asked in a half- 
whisper: 

“ Is this thy work? ” 

“ Mine, and one other cherished brother in 
science, Master Bungay of Oxford,” answered the 
monk. “ This is the slow work of seven years, my 
lord cardinal, and, as thou mayst guess, wrought 
for no common purpose. This head is formed with 
utmost care and skill by direction which I found 
writ out in parchments more ancient than the 
Church we worship. If my work have no flaw, 
when all is done this head will speak, and tell me 


Friar Bacons Brazen Head 263 

how I may encircle my England with a wall of 
brass, which now and hereafter will hold her in- 
vulnerable to the assaults of all enemies. Think of 
such a feat,” said Bacon, his face glowing with 
enthusiasm. “ Is it not worth my work to leave my 
name on such a monument to my country’s great- 
ness? ” 

“ Truly, good friar,” answered Clement, a little 
coldly, “ I doubt whether it be for the good of our 
Mother Church, and her power over the nations 
which are gathered under her wings, to have one 
of her children so walled about. But for thy good 
intentions, I do not doubt them, and for thy learn- 
ing I have nothing but respect. No doubt, thy 
brazen head, if perchance it should ever speak, will 
tell thee other wondrous things. Thou shalt not 
repent if thou lettest me have such advantage as 
may come of its teachings. But I confess, I should 
not like to see this little island so girt with brass. 
Suppose she might then take it into her head to 
defy papal authority, as, armed with such power, 
she might.” 

“ You reckon impossibilities, my lord,” exclaimed 
Bacon. “ In so impious a case, the wall, which 
should guard England from enemies, would topple 
down to crush her.” 

“ I pray thee, put such a charm as that into thy 


264 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

conjurations, good friar,” said Clement, rising to 
depart. “ But whatever betide, count on me as thy 
patron, and remember that in telling thee of my 
ambition, I have left my secret in thy keeping, as 
thine lies in my hands. Fare thee well, my son; 
peace remain with thee.” And with a gesture of 
blessing, the cardinal left the apartment. 

* 

It was night, and in Friar Bacon’s study the 
faint gleam of one solitary rush-light made the deep 
shadows which lurked in every corner more appar- 
ent and more awful. The curtains which screened 
the head were withdrawn, and it loomed up in the 
dimness to a gigantic size. Bending over the table 
on which the little candle burned, with a manuscript 
spread out before him, sat Friar Bacon, his face 
worn and pinched as of one who suffers for want 
of repose and proper nourishment. 

The marks upon the hour-glass beside him showed 
that it had been turned six times since sunset, and 
the sands of the last hour before midnight were 
swiftly slipping through the glass. Ever and anon 
the friar took up the little timekeeper, and shook it 
gently, as if to hasten the passage of the slow hours, 
and often, amid his watching and study, his head 
sank lower and lower toward the table, as if tired 
Nature would assert her rights, and steep him in 


Friar Bacon's Brazen Head 2 65 

the sweet oblivion of sleep, against his own power- 
ful will. 

All at once he started up, and striking a cymbal 
with a little silver hammer, he waited till the sum- 
mons was answered by his servant Miles, who came 
in sleepily rubbing his eyes, that he might be suffi- 
ciently awake to answer his master. 

The friar sat earnestly regarding Miles, till he 
had rubbed and stretched himself awake. 

“ Are you ready to do me a great service, 
Miles ?” he asked at length, when the serving- 
man’s attention had been riveted by his own fixed 
gaze. 

“ Anything which thou canst ask, good master,” 
returned Miles. “ Except it be to go on errands 
to the Evil One. That I would rather excuse my- 
self from.” 

“ Such service as I require has no such conditions. 
Listen, Miles. Thou seest the head yonder? ” 

Miles looked cautiously over his shoulder at the 
awful presence, and nodded assent. 

“ Thou knowest that for nine and thirty nights 
Friar Bungay and I have watched, by day and 
night, waiting to hear that which soon or late its 
lips are sure to utter. If it should speak, and its 
speech be unheeded, woe betide the makers, and 
woe betide our hopes of encircling our fair country 


266 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

with a wall which will make her forever invincible. 
To-night I have waited for Friar Bungay, till my 
eyelids are heavy, and I would fain take a brief 
rest. But I dare not leave the head unguarded, 
lest in my sleep it should utter that which I must 
heed. Can I trust you to wait here in my sleep, 
and if the head gives signs of speech, to wake me 
suddenly, that I may follow its magical instruc- 
tion? It is but for an hour or two, and then I will 
again resume my watch.” 

“ I will watch here as bravely as if I never knew 
what fear meant, good master,” answered Miles. 
“ I warrant the head will do me no harm, and I 
will repeat so many Aves and Paters that not a 
foul fiend will venture to come near me. So good- 
night and to sleep. Let me but get my trusty stave, 
which stands without, that I may arm myself, if any 
one enter to do me any hurt; and in a trice I will 
be here to guard thy wondrous handiwork.” 

So saying, Miles brought in a huge bludgeon, 
which he carried on his shoulder in true soldierly 
fashion. The friar rose, and pouring a small glass 
of strong liquor from a flask, he handed it to Miles, 
saying, — “ Drink that. It will keep thee from 
growing timorous in thy watch. Remember that 
on thy wakefulness rest all my hopes, and that a 
moment’s slumber may wreck them. Good-night 


267 


Friar Bacon's Brazen Head 

and Benedicite.” Thus saying, the friar, who could 
hardly speak from weariness, passed through the 
door which led into a small inner chamber, where 
he slept. 

Miles was doubly brave from the effect of the 
potent liquor the friar had given him, which now 
seemed to course through his veins like a swift ser- 
pent of flame. He glanced defiantly at the head, 
which hitherto he had only regarded with profound 
awe. Withdrawing himself as far as possible from 
the mortar in which he knew his master was wont 
to mix the terrible powder, whose production had 
branded him as one in league with Satan, he sat 
down near the brazen image to wait for any event 
which would break up the tedium of his watch. 

The minutes before midnight moved slowly on, 
and the last sands were dropping through the glass. 
Already, in the adjoining chamber, the heavy 
breathing of the friar told how quickly sleep had 
seized upon his weary senses. 

“ Sleep away, good master,” said Miles approv- 
ingly. “ I will take as good care of matters here 
as if thou wert broad awake. For my own part, I 
see little sense in so much watching of a head, which 
for aught we know was made out of an old kettle 
or a pair of battered helmets. As for my master, 
wise as he is, he must have a crack in his head-piece; 


268 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

else, instead of starving me and himself on bread- 
crusts and spring-water, he would call to his aid 
some of the brave spirits his art can command, and 
order good smoking-hot meats, and wine as good 
as the king uses, and have rich raiment and soft 
beds, instead of such poor accommodation as he 
keeps now. If thou canst tell him anything to bet- 
ter his conditions, good Master Brazen-Pate, ,, went 
on Miles, looking up at the gloomy features, which 
in the dim light seemed to frown upon him, “ do so, 
and I’ll set thee up for an oracle.” 

As he spoke these last words, a low sound of 
thunder muttered through the room, and shook 
gently the pedestal on which the Head rested. A 
single flash of light lit up the immovable features 
for one brief instant, and from the lips, a voice 
scarcely louder than a whisper, yet distinctly audi- 
ble, uttered the words: 

“ time is! ” 

“ Is that the beginning of your speech, old 
Brazen-Nose? ” said Miles, coolly regarding the 
Head as if it were the most natural thing in the 
world for it to speak thus. “ Go on, I pray thee, 
and let me hear if thou intendest to say anything 
worth noting. I will not wake my master for so 
slight a matter as that thou hast just announced. 


Friar Bacon's Brazen Head 269 

' Time is/ forsooth ! as if that would be news to any 
such scholar as Friar Bacon. Thou hadst best 
speak sense if thou wouldst have him listen to thee.” 

Again the thunder muttered,, but louder than at 
first; again the lightning gleamed over the impas- 
sive features, and the voice murmured: 

“ time was! ” 

“ On my life,” said Miles, scornfully, “ to think 
that my master and his friend should spend seven 
good years in making a head which says no more 
wonderful thing than any fishmonger could tell us. 
' Time was! ' I am but a fool, and I hope I know 
as much as that. Why not say something in Greek 
or Latin, or any of the learned tongues that Master 
; Bacon knows as well as he knows his breviary? 
Or, if thou canst speak nothing but common Eng- 
lish, tell us something more strange than this. 
Dost think I shall wake up my master to no better 
entertainment of conversation than thou hast of- 
fered him? Out upon thee for a braggart, that 
promisest by thy looks more than thy tongue can 
ever perform for thee.” 

While he was speaking, a sudden light lit up the 
Head with a brightness like that of day. The ter- 
rible features wore a frown so dreadful that the 
glance struck dismay to the heart of the swagger- 


270 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

ing Miles. As he stood motionless, with awful ac- 
cent and in a voice of thunder, the Head cried out : 

44 time is past! ’ 

Then came a lightning flash so vivid that the 
serving-man fell prone to earth, and with a fearful 
crash the grand Head fell, a shattered mass of 
fragments, without shape or semblance. 

Amidst the dire noise Friar Bacon started up 
and rushed to his doorway. At his feet was the 
work of seven years a blasted ruin. Groveling 
among the fragments lay the wretched Miles, ut- 
tering loud screams of fear. 

“ Peace, fool! ” commanded the friar, raising him 
to his feet. “ Silence! and tell me how this hap- 
pened. Did the Head speak? ” 

“ Aye, sir, he spake,” answered Miles, blubber- 
ing loudly. “ But he said naught worth noting. 
Didst thou not say it would utter strange words of 
learning? Yet it said at first only two words.” 

“ What words? ” 

“ Why, at first it said, 4 Time is/ and I, knowing 
that was no news of consequence, waited for some- 
thing better before I woke thee. Again it said, 
4 Time was/ and then with a loud cry it said, 4 Time 
is past/ and toppled over, giving my head many a 
hard bump with the fragments.” 


Friar Bacons Brazen Head 271 

“ Wretch! idiot, villain! ” cried the friar, seizing 
the frightened man, as if he would have strangled 
him. “ Thy foolishness has cost me the work of 
years, the hopes of a lifetime. No words can re- 
veal what thy idiocy has lost me. But go, leave my 
sight, miserable vagabond! I could kill myself in 
shame for having trusted thee.” And, releasing his 
hold of Miles, the friar sank into a chair and buried 
his face in his hands. 

“ It is the last,” he murmured. “ Henceforth I 
bid farewell to magic. From this moment I will 
close my study and burn my books. Hereafter 
only to religion will I devote myself, and dying I 
shall leave not even my poor name to add to my 
country’s glory.” 


THE MYSTERY OF CRO-A-TAN 
A. D. 1587 

Margaret J. Preston 

I 

The home-bound ships stood out to sea, 

And on the island’s marge 
Sir Richard 1 waited restlessly 
To step into the barge. 

“ The Governor tarrieth long,” he chode, 

4i As he were loath to go: 

With food before and want behind, 

There should be haste, I trow.” 

Even as he spake the Governor came : — 

“ Nay, fret not, for the men 
Have held me back with frantic let, 

To have them home again. 

“ The women weep : — ‘Ay, ay, the ships 
Will come again (he saith) 

Before the May; — before the May 
We shall have starved to death ! 9 

1 The first English colony was sent to America by Sir Walter 
Raleigh under the auspices of Sir Richard Grenville. The 
settlement was made on Roanoke Island in Albemarle Sound. 

272 


The Mystery of Cro-a-tan 


273 


“ I’ve sworn return by God’s dear leave, 

I’ve vowed by Court and Crown, 

Nor yet appeased them. Comrade, thou, 
Mayhap, canst soothe them down.” 

Sir Richard loosed his helm, and stretched 
Impatient hands abroad: — 

u Have ye no trust in man? ” he cried, 

“ Have ye no faith in God? 

“ Your Governor goes, as needs he must, 

To bear through royal grace, 

Hither, such food-supply that want 
May never blench a face. 

“ Of freest choice ye willed to leave 
Whatso ye had of ease; 

For neither stress of liege nor law 
Hath forced you over seas. 

“ Your Governor leaves fair hostages 
As costliest pledge of care, — 

His daughter yonder, and her child. 

The child Virginia Dare.” 1 

1 Virginia Dare, the granddaughter of Governor Whyte, was 
the first English child born in America. 


274 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ Come hither, little sweetheart! So! 
Thou’lt be the first, I ween, 

To bend the knee, and send through me 
Thy birthland’s virgin fealty 
Unto its Virgin Queen. 

“ And now, good folk, for my commands: 
If ye are fain to roam 
Beyond this island’s narrow bounds, 

To seek elsewhere a home; — 

“ Upon some pine-tree’s smoothen trunk 
Score deep the Indian name 
Of tribe or village where ye haunt, 

That we may read the same. 

“ And if ye leave your haven here 
Through dire distress or loss, 

Cut deep within the wood above 
The symbol of the cross. 

“ And now on my good blade, I swear, 
And seal it with this sign, 

That if the fleet that sails to-day 
Return not hither by the May, 

The fault shall not be mine! ” 


The Mystery of Cro-a-tan 


275 


II 

The breath of spring was on the sea; 

Anon the Governor stepped 
His good ship’s deck right merrily, — 
His promise had been kept. 

“ See, see! the coast-line comes in view! ” 
He heard the mariners shout, — 

“ We’ll drop our anchors in the Sound 
Before a star is out! ” 

“ Now God be praised! ” he inly breathed, 
“ Who saves from all that harms; 

The morrow morn my pretty ones 
Will rest within my arms.” 

At dawn of day they moored their ships, 
And dared the breakers’ roar: 

What meant it? Not a man was there 
To welcome them ashore! 

They sprang to find the cabins rude: 

The quick green sedge had thrown 
Its knotted web o’er every door, 

And climbed the chimney-stone. 


276 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

The spring was choked with winter’s leaves, 
And feebly gurgled on; 

And from the pathway, strewn with rack. 
All trace of feet was gone. 

Their fingers thrid the matted grass, 

If there, perchance, a mound 
Unseen might heave the broken turf ; 

But not a grave was found. 

They beat the tangled cypress swamp, 

If haply in despair 
They might have strayed into its glade, 

But found no vestige there. 

“ The pine! the pine! ” the Governor groaned; 
And there each staring man 
Read in a maze, one single word, 

Deep carven, — Cro-A-Tan ! 

But cut above, no cross, no sign, 

No symbol of distress; 

Naught else beside that mystic line 
Within the wilderness. 

And where and what was “ Cro-a-tan ”? 

But not an answer came ; 

And none of all who read it there 
Had ever heard the name. 


277 


The Mystery of Cro-a-tan 

The Governor drew his jerkin sleeve 
Across his misty eyes : 

“ Some land, may be, of savagery 
Beyond the coast that lies; 

“ And skulking there the wily foe 
In ambush may have lain; 

God’s mercy ! Could such sweetest heads 
Lie scalped among the slain? 

“ O daughter ! daughter ! with the thought 
My harrowed brain is wild! 

Up with the anchors ! I must find 
The mother and the child! ” 

They scoured the mainland near and far: 
The search no tidings brought; 

Till ’mid a forest’s dusky tribe 
They heard the name they sought. 

The kindly natives came with gifts 
Of corn and slaughtered deer: 

What room for savage treachery 
Or foul suspicion here? 

Unhindered of a chief or brave, 

They searched the wigwam through; 

But neither lance nor helm nor spear. 

Nor shred of child’s nor woman’s gear, 
Could furnish forth a clue. 


278 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

How could a hundred souls be caught 
Straight out of life, nor find 

Device through which to mark their fate. 
Or leave some hint behind? 

Had winter’s ocean inland rolled 
An eagre’s deadly spray, 

That overwhelmed the island’s breadth, 
And swept them all away? 

In vain, in vain, their heart-sick search ! 
No tidings reached them more; 

No record save that silent word 
Upon that silent shore. 

The mystery rests a mystery still, 
Unsolved of mortal man: 

Sphinx-like untold, the ages hold 
The tale of Cro-A-Tan! 



HOWE’S MASQUERADE 
Nathaniel Hawthorne 

At one of the entertainments given at the Prov- 
ince House, during the latter part of the siege of 
Boston, there passed a scene which has never yet 
been satisfactorily explained. The officers of the 
British army, and the loyal gentry of the province, 
most of whom were collected within the beleaguered 
town, had been invited to a masked ball; for it was 
the policy of Sir William Howe to hide the distress 
and danger of the period, and the desperate aspect 
of the siege, under an ostentation of festivity. The 
spectacle of this evening, if the oldest members of 
279 



280 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

the provincial court circle might be believed, was 
the most gay and gorgeous affair that had occurred 
in the annals of the government. The brilliantly- 
lighted apartments were thronged with figures that 
seemed to have stepped from the dark canvas of his- 
toric portraits, or to have flitted forth from the 
magic pages of romance, or at least to have flown 
hither from one of the London theatres, without a 
change of garments. Steeled knights of the Con- 
quest, bearded statesmen of Queen Elizabeth, and 
high-ruffled ladies of her court, were mingled with 
characters of comedy, such as a party-colored 
Merry Andrew, jingling his cap and bells; a Fal- 
staff, almost as provocative of laughter as his pro- 
totype; and a Don Quixote, with a bean-pole for a 
lance, and a pot-lid for a shield. 

But the broadest merriment was excited by a 
group of figures ridiculously dressed in old regi- 
mentals, which seemed to have been purchased at a 
military rag fair, or pilfered from some receptacle 
of the cast-off clothes of both the French and Brit- 
ish armies. Portions of their attire had probably 
been worn at the siege of Louisburg, and the coats 
of most recent cut might have been rent and tat- 
tered by sword, ball, or bayonet, as long ago as 
Wolfe’s victory. One of these worthies — a tall, 
lank figure, brandishing a rusty sword of immense 


Howe's Masquerade 281 

longitude — purported to be no less a personage 
than General George Washington; and the other 
principal officers of the American army, such as 
Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward and Heath, 
were represented by similar scarecrows. An inter- 
view in the mock-heroic style, between the rebel 
warriors and the British commander-in-chief, was 
received with immense applause, which came loud- 
est of all from the loyalists of the colony. There 
was one of the guests, however, who stood apart, 
eyeing these antics sternly and scornfully, at once 
with a frown and a bitter smile. 

It was an old man, formerly of high station and 
great repute in the province, and who had been a 
very famous soldier in his day. Some surprise had 
been expressed that a person of Colonel Joliffe’s 
known Whig principles, though now too old to take 
an active part in the contest, should have remained 
in Boston during the siege, and especially that he 
should consent to show himself in the mansion of 
Sir William Howe. But thither he had come, with 
a fair granddaughter under his arm; and there, 
amid all the mirth and buffoonery, stood this stern 
old figure, the best sustained character in the mas- 
querade, because so well representing the antique 
spirit of his native land. The other guests affirmed 
that Colonel Joliffe’s black puritanical scowl threw 


282 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

a shadow round about him ; although in spite of his 
sombre influence their gaiety continued to blaze 
higher, like — (an ominous comparison) — the flick- 
ering brilliancy of a lamp which has but a little 
while to burn. Eleven strokes, full half an hour 
ago, had pealed from the clock of the Old South, 
when a rumor was circulated among the company 
that some new spectacle or pageant was about to be 
exhibited, which should put a fitting close to the 
splendid festivities of the night. 

“ What new jest has your Excellency in hand? ” 
asked the Rev. Mather Byles, whose Presbyterian 
scruples had not kept him from the entertainment. 
“ Trust me, sir, I have already laughed more than 
beseems my cloth at your Homeric confabulation 
with yonder ragamuffin General of the rebels. One 
other such fit of merriment, and I must throw off 
my clerical wig and band.” 

“ Not so, good Doctor Byles,” answered Sir Wil- 
liam Howe; “ if mirth were a crime, you had never 
gained your doctorate in divinity. As to this new 
foolery, I know no more about it than yourself; 
perhaps not so much. Honestly now, Doctor, have 
you not stirred up the sober brains of some of your 
countrymen to enact a scene in our masquerade? ” 

“ Perhaps,” slyly remarked the granddaughter 
of Colonel Joliffe, whose high spirit had been stung 


Howe's Masquerade 283 

by many taunts against New England, — “ perhaps 
we are to have a mask of allegorical figures. Vic- 
tory, with trophies from Lexington and Bunker 
Hill — Plenty, with her overflowing horn, to typify 
the present abundance in this good town — and 
Glory, with a wreath for his Excellency’s brow.” 

Sir William Howe smiled at words which he 
would have answered with one of his darkest frowns 
had they been uttered by lips that wore a beard. 
He was spared the necessity of a retort, by a singu- 
lar interruption. A sound of music was heard 
without the house, as if proceeding from a full band 
of military instruments stationed in the street, play- 
ing not such a festal strain as was suited to the oc- 
casion, but a slow funeral march. The drums ap- 
peared to be muffled, and the trumpets poured forth 
a wailing breath, which at once hushed the merri- 
ment of the auditors, filling all with wonder, and 
some with apprehension. The idea occurred to 
many that either the funeral procession of some 
great personage had halted in front of the Province 
House, or that a corpse, in a velvet-covered and 
gorgeously-decorated coffin, was about to be borne 
from the portal. After listening a moment, Sir 
William Howe called, in a stern voice, to the leader 
of the musicians, who had hitherto enlivened the 
entertainment with gay and lightsome melodies. 


284 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

The man was drum-major to one of the British 
regiments. 

“ Dighton,” demanded the general, what means 
this foolery? Bid your band silence that dead 
march — or, by my word, they shall have sufficient 
cause for their lugubrious strains! Silence it, 
sirrah! ” 

“ Please, your honor,” answered the drum-major, 
whose rubicund visage had lost all its color, “ the 
fault is none of mine. I and my band are all here 
together, and I question whether there be a man of 
us that could play that march without book. I 
never heard it but once before, and that was at the 
funeral of his late Majesty, King George the Sec- 
ond.” 

“ Well, well! ” said Sir William Howe, recover- 
ing his composure — “ it is the prelude to some mas- 
querading antic. Let it pass.” 

A figure now presented itself, but among the 
many fantastic masks that were dispersed through 
the apartments none could tell precisely from 
whence it came. It was a man in an old-fashioned 
dress of black serge, and having the aspect of a 
steward or principal domestic in the household of a 
nobleman or great English landholder. This fig- 
ure advanced to the outer door of the mansion, and 
throwing both its leaves wide open, withdrew a lit- 


Howe's Masquerade 285 

tie to one side and looked back toward the grand 
staircase as if expecting some person to descend. 
At the same time the music in the street sounded a 
loud and doleful summons. The eyes of Sir Wil- 
liam Howe and his guests being directed to the 
staircase, there appeared, on the uppermost land- 
ing-place that was discernible from the bottom, 
several personages descending toward the door. 
The foremost was a man of stern visage, wearing a 
steeple-crowned hat and a skull-cap beneath it, a 
dark cloak, and huge wrinkled boots that came half 
way up his legs. Under his arm was a rolled-up 
banner, which seemed to be the banner of England, 
but strangely rent and torn; he had a sword in his 
right hand, and grasped a Bible in his left. The 
next figure was of milder aspect, yet full of dignity, 
wearing a broad ruff, over which descended a beard, 
a gown of wrought velvet, and a doublet and hose 
of black satin. He carried a roll of manuscript in 
his hand. Close behind these two came a young 
man of very striking countenance and demeanor, 
with deep thought and contemplation on his brow, 
and perhaps a flash of enthusiasm in his eye. His 
garb, like that of his predecessors, was of an antique 
fashion, and there was a stain of blood upon his 
ruff. In the same group with these there were 
three or four others, all men of dignity and evident 


286 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

command, and bearing themselves like personages 
who were accustomed to the gaze of the multitude. 
It was the idea of the beholders that these figures 
went to join the mysterious funeral that had halted 
in front of the Province House; yet that supposi- 
tion seemed to be contradicted by the air of triumph 
with which they waved their hands, as they crossed 
the threshold and vanished through the portal. 

“In the devil’s name what is this?” muttered 
Sir William Howe to a gentleman beside him ; “ a 
procession of the regicide judges of King Charles 
the martyr? ” 

“ These,” said Colonel Joliffe, breaking silence 
almost for the first time that evening, — “ these, if I 
interpret them aright, are the Puritan governors — 
the rulers of the old original Democracy of Massa- 
chusetts. Endicott, with the banner from which 
he had torn the symbol of subjection, and Win- 
throp, and Sir Henry Vane, and Dudley, Haynes, 
Bellingham, and Leverett.” 

“ Why had that young man a stain of blood upon 
his ruff? ” asked Miss Joliffe. 

“ Because, in after years,” answered her grand- 
father, “ he laid down the wisest head in England 
upon the block for the principles of liberty.” 

“ Will not your Excellency order out the 
guard?” whispered Lord Percy, who, with other 


Howe's Masquerade 287 

British officers, had now assembled round the Gen- 
eral. “ There may be a plot under this mummery.” 

“ Tush! we have nothing to fear,” carelessly re- 
plied Sir William Howe. “ There can be no worse 
treason in the matter than a jest, and that some- 
what of the dullest. Even were it a sharp and 
bitter one, our best policy would be to laugh it off. 
See — here come more of these gentry.” 

Another group of characters had now partly de- 
scended the staircase. The first was a venerable 
and white-bearded patriarch, who cautiously felt 
his way downward with a staff. Treading hastily 
behind him, and stretching forth his gauntleted 
hand as if to grasp the old man's shoulder, came a 
tall, soldier-like figure, equipped with a plumed cap 
of steel, a bright breastplate, and a long sword, 
which rattled against the stairs. Next was seen a 
stout man, dressed in rich and courtly attire, but 
not of courtly demeanor; his gait had the swinging 
motion of a seaman’s walk, and chancing to stumble 
on the staircase, he suddenly grew wrathful, and 
was heard to mutter an oath. He was followed by 
a noble-looking personage in a curled wig, such as 
are represented in the portraits of Queen Anne’s 
time and earlier; and the breast of his coat was 
decorated with an embroidered star. While ad- 
vancing to the door, he bowed to the right hand and 


288 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

to the left, in a very gracious and insinuating style; 
but as he crossed the threshold, unlike the early 
Puritan governors, he seemed to wring his hands 
with sorrow. 

“ Prithee, play the part of chorus, good Doctor 
Byles,” said Sir William Howe. “ What worthies 
are these? ” 

“ If it please your Excellency, they lived some- 
what before my day,” answered the doctor, “ but 
doubtless our friend, the Colonel, has been hand 
and glove with them.” 

“ Their living faces I never looked upon,” said 
Colonel Joliffe, gravely; “ although I have spoken 
face to face with many rulers of this land, and shall 
greet yet another with an old man’s blessing ere I 
die. But we talk of these figures. I take the ven- 
erable patriarch to be Bradstreet, the last of the 
Puritans, who was governor at ninety or there- 
abouts. The next is Sir Edmund Andros, a tyrant, 
as any New England schoolboy will tell you; and 
therefore the people cast him down from his high 
seat into a dungeon. Then comes Sir William 
Phipps, shepherd, cooper, sea-captain and governor 
— may many of his countrymen rise as high from as 
low an origin! Lastly, you saw the gracious 
Earl of Bellamont, who ruled us under King 
William.” 


Howe's Masquerade 289 

“ But what is the meaning of it all? ” asked Lord 
Percy. 

“ Now, were I a rebel,” said Miss Joliffe, half 
aloud, “ I might fancy that the ghosts of these an- 
cient governors had been summoned to form the 
funeral procession of royal authority in New Eng- 
land.” 

Several other figures were now seen at the turn 
of the staircase. The one in advance had a thought- 
ful, anxious, and somewhat crafty expression of 
face, and in spite of his loftiness of manner, which 
was evidently the result both of an ambitious spirit 
and of long continuance in high stations, he seemed 
not incapable of cringing to a greater than himself. 
A few steps behind came an officer in a scarlet and 
embroidered uniform, cut in a fashion old enough 
to have been worn by the Duke of Marlborough. 
His nose had a rubicund tinge, which, together with 
the twinkle of his eye, might have marked him as a 
lover of the wine cup and good fellowship ; notwith- 
standing which tokens he appeared ill at ease, and 
often glanced around him as if apprehensive of 
some secret mischief. Next came a portly gentle- 
man, wearing a coat of shaggy cloth, lined with 
silken velvet; he had sense, shrewdness, and humor 
in his face, and a folio volume under his arm; but 
his aspect was that of a man vexed and tormented 


290 More Mystery 'Tales f or 'Boys and Girls 

beyond all patience, and harassed almost to death. 
He went hastily down, and was followed by a dig- 
nified person, dressed in a purple velvet suit, with 
very rich embroidery; his demeanor would have 
possessed much stateliness, only that a grievous fit 
of the gout compelled him to hobble from stair to 
stair, with contortions of face and body. When 
Doctor Byles beheld this figure on the staircase, he 
shivered as with an ague, but continued to watch 
him steadfastly, until the gouty gentleman had 
reached the threshold, made a gesture of anguish 
and despair, and vanished into the outer gloom, 
whither the funeral music summoned him. 

“Governor Belcher! — my old patron! — in his 
very shape and dress ! ” gasped Doctor Byles. 
“ This is an awful mockery! ” 

“A tedious foolery, rather,” said Sir William 
Howe, with an air of indifference. “ But who 
were the three that preceded him? ” 

“ Governor Dudley, a cunning politician — yet 
his craft once brought him to a prison,” replied 
Colonel J oliffe. “ Governor Shute, formerly a 
Colonel under Marlborough, and whom the people 
frightened out of the province; and learned Gov- 
ernor Burnet, whom the legislature tormented into 
a mortal fever.” 

“ Methinks they were miserable men, these royal 


Hope's Masquerade 291 

governors of Massachusetts,” observed Miss Joliffe. 
" Heavens, how dim the light grows ! ” 

It was certainly a fact that the large lamp which 
illuminated the staircase now burned dim and dusk- 
ily; so that several figures, which passed hastily 
down the stairs and went forth from the porch, ap- 
peared rather like shadows than persons of fleshly 
substance. Sir William Howe and his guests stood 
at the doors of the contiguous apartments, watch- 
ing the progress of this singular pageant, with va- 
rious emotions of anger, contempt, or half -acknowl- 
edged fear, but still with an anxious curiosity. The 
shapes which now seemed hastening to join the 
mysterious procession were recognized rather by 
striking peculiarities of dress, or broad characteris- 
tics of manner, than by any perceptible resemblance 
of features to their prototypes. Their faces, in- 
deed, were invariably kept in deep shadow. But 
Doctor Byles, and other gentlemen who had long 
been familiar with the successive rulers of the prov- 
ince, were heard to whisper the names of Shirley, 
of Pownall, of Sir Francis Bernard, and of the 
well-remembered Hutchinson; thereby confessing 
that the actors, whoever they might be, in this spec- 
tral march of governors, had succeeded in putting 
on some distant portraiture of the real personages. 
As they vanished from the door, still did these 


292 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

shadows toss their arms into the gloom of night, 
with a dread expression of woe. Following the 
mimic representative of Hutchinson came a mili- 
tary figure, holding before his face the cocked hat 
which he had taken from his powdered head; but his 
epaulettes and other insignia of rank were those of 
a general officer, and something in his mien re- 
minded the beholders of one who had recently been 
master of the Province House, and chief of all the 
land. 

“ The shape of Gage, as true as in a looking- 
glass,” exclaimed Lord Percy, turning pale. 

“ No, surely,” cried Miss Joliffe, laughing hys- 
terically; “it could not be Gage, or Sir William 
would have greeted his old comrade in arms ! Per- 
haps he will not suffer the next to pass unchal- 
lenged.” 

“ Of that be assured, young lady,” answered Sir 
William Howe, fixing his eyes, with a very marked 
expression, upon the immovable visage of her 
grandfather. “ I have long enough delayed to pay 
the ceremonies of a host to these departing guests. 
The next that takes his leave shall receive due 
courtesy.” 

A wild and dreary burst of music came through 
the open door. It seemed as if the procession, 
which had been gradually filling up its ranks, were 


Howe's Masquerade 293 

now about to move, and that this loud peal of the 
wailing trumpets, and roll of the muffled drums, 
were a call to some loiterer to make haste. Many 
eyes, by an irresistible impulse, were turned upon 
Sir William Howe, as if it were he whom the 
dreary music summoned to the funeral of departed 
power. 

“See! — here comes the last!” whispered Miss 
Joliffe, pointing her tremulous finger to the stair- 
case. 

A figure had come into view as if descending the 
stairs; although so dusky was the region whence it 
emerged, some of the spectators fancied that they 
had seen this human shape suddenly moulding itself 
amid the gloom. Downward the figure came, with 
a stately and martial tread, and reaching the lowest 
stair was observed to be a tall man, booted and 
wrapped in a military cloak, which was drawn up 
around the face so as to meet the flapped brim of a 
laced hat. The features, therefore, were com- 
pletely hidden. But the British officers deemed 
that they had seen that military cloak before, and 
even recognized the frayed embroidery on the col- 
lar, as well as the gilded scabbard of a sword which 
protruded from the folds of the cloak, and glittered 
in a vivid gleam of light. Apart from these trifling 
particulars, there were characteristics of gait and 


294 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

bearing which impelled the wondering guests fo 
glance from the shrouded figure to Sir William 
Howe, as if to satisfy themselves that their host 
had not suddenly vanished from the midst of 
them. 

With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow tKey 
saw the General draw his sword and advance to 
meet the figure in the cloak before the latter had 
stepped one pace upon the floor. 

“Villain, unmuffle yourself !” cried he. “You 
pass no farther! ” 

The figure, without blenching a hair’s breadth 
from the sword which was pointed at his breast, 
made a solemn pause and lowered the cape of the 
cloak from about his face, yet not sufficiently for 
the spectators to catch a glimpse of it. But Sir 
William Howe had evidently seen enough. The 
sternness of his countenance gave place to a look of 
wild amazement, if not horror, while he recoiled 
several steps from the figure, and let fall his sword 
upon the floor. The martial shape again drew the 
cloak about his features and passed on; but reach- 
ing the threshold, with his back toward the specta- 
tors, he was seen to stamp his foot and shake his 
clinched hands in the air. It was afterward af- 
firmed that Sir William Howe had repeated that 
selfsame gesture of rage and sorrow, when, for the 


Howe's Masquerade 29 5 

last time, and as the last royal governor, he passed 
through the portal of the Province House. 

“Hark! — the procession moves,” said Miss Jo- 
liffe. 

The music was dying away along the street, and 
its dismal strains were mingled with the knell of 
midnight from the steeple of the Old South, and 
with the roar of artillery, which announced that the 
beleaguering army of Washington had intrenched 
itself upon a nearer height than before. As the 
deep boom of the cannon smote upon his ear, 
Colonel Joliffe raised himself to the full height of 
his aged form, and smiled sternly on the British 
general. 

“ Would your Excellency inquire further into 
the mystery of the pageant? ” said he. 

“ Take care of your gray head! ” cried Sir Wil- 
liam Howe, fiercely, though with a quivering 
lip. “ It has stood too long on a traitor’s shoul- 
ders!” 

“ You must make haste to chop it off, then,” 
calmly replied the Colonel; “for a few hours 
longer, and not all the power of Sir William Howe, 
nor of his master, shall cause one of these gray 
hairs to fall. The empire of Britain in this ancient 
province is at its last gasp to-night ; — almost while 
I speak it is a dead corpse; — and methinks the 


296 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

shadows of the old governors are fit mourners at its 
funeral! ” 

With these words Colonel Joliffe threw on his 
cloak, and drawing his granddaughter’s arm within 
his own, retired from the last festival that a British 
ruler ever held in the old province of Massachusetts 
Bay. It was supposed that the Colonel and the 
young lady possessed some secret intelligence in re- 
gard to the mysterious pageant of that night. 
However this might be, such knowledge has never 
become general. The actors in the scene have van- 
ished into deeper obscurity than even that wild In- 
dian band who scattered the cargoes of the tea ships 
on the waves, and gained a place in history, yet left 
no names. But superstition, among other legends 
of this mansion, repeats the wondrous tale, that on 
the anniversary night of Britain’s discomfiture the 
ghosts of the ancient governors of Massachusetts 
still glide through the portal of the Province 
House. And last of all, comes a figure shrouded in 
a military cloak, tossing his clinched hands into the 
air, and stamping his iron-shod boots upon the 
broad freestone steps, with a semblance of feverish 
despair, but without the sound of a foot-tramp. 


THE ABBAYE DE CERISY 1 
Mary Louisa Molesworth 

In the spring of the year 1889 two ladies were 
seated together one afternoon talking comfortably, 
as they sipped their “ five-o’clock tea.” Five- 
o’clock tea is, or was, at least, a thoroughly English 
institution, but it is no longer unknown to our 
neighbors across the Channel. And a glance — a 
glance of the slightest and shortest, would have 
shown any one that this special refection was not 
being enjoyed in an English drawing-room or 
boudoir. 

The room was small, oblong in shape, the whole 
of one end being occupied by a rather large win- 
dow, or glazed door, opening on to a balcony. 
From this balcony one had a good view of a wide, 
quaint, hilly street, with high walls on each side, in 
which, at irregular intervals, were visible the great 
portes-cocheres leading into the coach-yards of the 
spacious old mansions or hotels of the gentry still 
resident in an old town of Normandy. Here and 

1 The incident here related is perfectly true. The Abbaye de 
Cerisy is the real name of the place where the strange recluse 
was seen. 


297 


298 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

there stood a more modest dwelling-house, guiltless 
of cour * (though not of jar din 1 at the back) , whose 
front-door steps ran straight down to the pave- 
ment. It was a very picturesque street, from every 
point of view, and the long, level rays of the after- 
noon sun showed it to peculiar advantage. 

Inside the boudoir, it was difficult to believe one’s 
self still in the nineteenth century. The room was 
entirely lined with wood — light-colored brown 
wood — into the panels of which were inserted Louis 
XVI paintings of the quaintest description: cupids, 
nymphs, garden and terrace landscapes, grotesque 
statues, grinning masks. The furniture, of which 
there was not much, and indeed the space was very 
small, was mostly of the same date; a small brass- 
mounted, marble-topped bureau occupied one cor- 
ner; two or three medallion-backed, white-painted 
chairs stood about. 

With this background, the little English tea- 
table, and the two friends seated — on easier chairs 
than the Louis XVI fauteuils — were scarcely in 
keeping. But the cups and saucers were of old 
Sevres; and the snow-white hair, drawn back from 
the forehead, of the elder of the two ladies — a 
woman of sixty or thereabouts — simply though 
richly dressed in black, with touches of creamy old 


1 Courtyard. 


* Garden. 


299 


The Abbaye de Cbrisy 

lace here and there, harmonized with the whole, or 
rather seemed a sort of meeting-point for the past 
and the present. This lady was the Marquise de 
Romars ; her companion, considerably younger than 
herself, was her visitor, and an Englishwoman, by 
name Miss Poynsett. 

Miss Poynsett was on her way home from a win- 
ter spent in the south; she had lingered, nothing 
loth, to pass a few days with her hospitable old 
friend. 

“ Then there is really no chance of my seeing you 
again this year, my dear Clemency? ” said the old 
lady. 

Miss Poynsett shook her head. “ None what- 
ever, unless you will come over to us.” 

“ That I cannot. But I had hoped the exhibi- 
tion, the Eiffel Tower, and all the rest of it, would 
have tempted some of you to Paris ; and, of course, 
it is easy to make this a half-way, or three-quarters- 
way house,” said Madame de Romars — who, by the 
way, spoke perfect English — insinuatingly. 

Again Miss Poynsett shook her head, more vig- 
orously this time. 

“ If a visit to you were not temptation enough, 
certainly Paris in a state of exhibition would not 
be,” she said, half laughingly. “ I cannot bear ex- 
hibitions, and Paris, with a world’s show going on, 


300 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

is worst of all. Just think of how one would be 
running up against everybody one had ever seen or 
heard of. Not that I am unsociable; but one 
doesn’t leave one’s own country to see one’s own 
countryfolk. When I travel, I like to see new 
things and people.” 

“ The exhibition would be new, and the Eiffel 
Tower has certainly never been seen before,” said 
Madame de Romars, in a matter-of-fact tone. 

“ Dear madame, I think the Eiffel Tower has 
bewitched you,” replied her friend. “ I have not 
the very slightest wish to see it nor the exhibition. 
And then the association! I should have thought 
you would have shrunk from any commemoration 
of the horrors of a hundred years ago.” 

The old lady did not at once reply. 

“ This year actually commemorates the destruc- 
tion of the Bastille,” she said, after a little pause. 
“ With that one can have full sympathy. As for 

what came afterward ” she sighed deeply. 

“ One of the most grievous thoughts about the 
great Revolution,” she went on — “ even, in the 
widest sense, more grievous than the terrible indi- 
vidual horrors, is what it might have been and done; 
what enormous opportunities for the world’s good 
were lost at that time. For the individual suffer- 
ing is over and past, and doubtless it made saints 


301 


The Ahhaye de Cerisy 

and martyrs of many who might otherwise have 
lived and died like soulless animals ; but the misdi- 
rection, the fearful misuse and abuse of the powers 
at that time set free will never — while the world 
lasts, it sometimes seems to me — be, in their sad 
consequences, past and over.” 

Miss Poynsett listened attentively and respect- 
fully, but scarcely as if she fully understood. 

“ I am no philosopher like you, dear madame,” 
she said. “ To me, I own the story of the great 
Revolution is just like a very fearful, though most 
fascinating, tragedy; it is the personal histories 
mixed up in it that always come into my mind. 
And oh, by-the-by, I am so much obliged to you for 
lending me Monsieur de Beauchesne’s hook; it has 
interested me exceedingly. Indeed, for a time, 
some parts of it almost haunted me.” 

“ You mean, of course, his ‘ Louis XVII/ I 
forgot I had lent it to you. Yes, it is a very im- 
pressive book, and a very exhaustive account of 
what is always full of fresh interest — the history of 
the Royal Family in the Temple. Of course the 
dauphin is the central figure. Monsieur de Beau- 
chesne has really got together everything that is 
known about the poor little prince. One or two of 
the anecdotes are intensely touching.” 

“Almost too much so. I can’t imagine ever be- 


302 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

ing able to read them without tears/’ the English 
lady replied. “ Monsieur de Beauchesne seems 
quite to set beyond a doubt the child’s death in his 
prison,” she went on, after a little pause. “ It is 
almost disappointing, there is such a fascination 
about the subject. And one would fain have hoped 
that perhaps , after all, though his princeship was 
over for ever, the poor boy had some peaceful years, 
even in a comparatively humble position.” 

The Marquise remained silent for a moment or 
two. When she spoke, her voice was very grave 
and almost solemn. 

“ I don’t think it is to be hoped or wished that it 
was so,” she said. “ For my part, I would rather 
believe he died at the time generally supposed. 
Nothing in the annals of child saints or martyrs 
could be more beautiful, more holy, than those last 
days of his life in the Temple. One can scarcely 
think it possible that a soul so near heaven had 
longer to stay on earth. And yet — No, Clemency, 
I hope he died that 8th of June. His life, had he 
lived, did he live, must have been too sad.” 

Something in her words and tone struck her com- 
panion. She looked up eagerly. 

“ There is a shade of uncertainty in your way of 
speaking, dear madame,” she said. “ You don’t 
mean to say that you have any other theory on the 


The Abbaye de Cerisy 303 

subject, besides all the stories Monsieur de Beau- 
chesne refutes so carefully? ” 

“ No,” said the old lady. “ I have no theory, 
but — I had a strange adventure once, Clemency, 
and though I have told it to very few — no one now 
living remembers it — I have never lost the impres- 
sion it left on my mind.” 

She stopped. Miss Poynsett opened her lips to 
speak, but hesitated. Her eager look and ques- 
tioning eyes, however, told their own story. Ma- 
dame de Romars understood her. 

“ I will tell it to you if you like,” she said. 
“ There is no reason why I should not; it can do no 
one any harm. And I fear you will be disap- 
pointed; there is so little to tell.” 

“ No, no; whatever it is, it will interest me,” said 
Clemency. “And thank you so much. I hope 
there is nothing painful to yourself in it.” 

“ Not exactly. Oh no; it only brings back past 
days, and sadder than that, past hopes and bright 
anticipations never to be realized. For I was very 
young then — not twenty-one — and I think nearly 
all the friends just at that time associated with me 
are dead — yes, all. But I will tell you my story. 
It was, as nearly as I can remember, in the year 
1844. We, my husband and I, were staying with 
a party of friends, mostly young — I myself was 


304 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

little more than a bride — at a charming old chateau 
in the further extremity of Normandy. The cha- 
teau was old, hut recently restored, so that, espe- 
cially as the restoration had been carried out with 
the greatest care and good taste, it really combined 
the attractions of antiquity with those of modern 
life. It had been for centuries the home of our 
hosts’ ancestors; the present festivities were a sort 
of 4 house-warming,’ after the restorations, as well 
as to do honor to the fianpailles of the lovely, young 
and only daughter of the family, a girl of eighteen, 
who was to be married a few weeks later in the sea- 
son. All of these details are irrelevant to my little 
story, but they have remained in my memory as a 
sort of frame to it, or, one might say, a bright back- 
ground to the strange sad impression my adventure 
left. 

44 Our days passed delightfully. The country 
was picturesque and beautiful. There were points 
of interest of various kinds, old Roman remains, 
famous 4 views,’ charming woods; every day some 
new excursion to one or other of these was planned, 
and, thanks to the quite exceptionally fine weather, 
these were successfully carried out. Yes, it was a 
very happy time. 

44 One day, an expedition was arranged to visit 
the ancient Abbaye de Cerisy. I was delighted to 


305 


The Abbaye de Cerisy 

make one of the party, especially as we were to stop 
at the Chateau de Selcourt, on the way, which we 
did. This is one of the few remaining really feudal 
chateaux, interesting on that ground alone, though 
it is also worth visiting for its quantity of old tapes- 
try, furniture, and some queer pictures. One I 
remember well, was a picture of the Blessed Virgin 
surrounded by her cousins , knights in full ‘ Moyen 
Age ’ armor, and ladies in the garb of nuns. At 
Selcourt, too, there are seven fish-ponds, considered 
a unique curiosity. Then we drove on to Cerisy. 
We had spent more time than we intended at Sel- 
court, so that when we got to the Abbaye, it was 
already rather late afternoon. We hastened to 
visit the church and the old cloisters, and the archi- 
tectural connoisseurs among us were loud in their 
praise of the grandly simple Norman style. There 
was one fish-pond at Cerisy too, a very large one, 
and there was a legend connected with it which in- 
terested some of our party. I got tired of the dis- 
cussion about it and wandered off by myself, choos- 
ing accidentally a path which led, I found, to some 
old, half-ruinous buildings. This sort of thing has 
always had a great attraction for me, and I had a 
curiosity to find the building which, in former days, 
must have been the Abbot’s house. I was really 
delighted when suddenly, at the angle of a wall 


306 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

which I had been skirting, I came upon a very 
massive and most curiously carved door, in an al- 
most perfect state of preservation. I felt like the 
prince in the * Sleeping Beauty ’ story, only my 
door was not overgrown with nettles and brambles. 
On the contrary, it was slightly ajar, and had evi- 
dently been opened not long before, for a very 
slight touch made it turn on its hinges enough for 
me to see before me a large wide stone staircase 
with handsome and curiously carved rampe also in 
stone. This was too enticing to resist. Up I 
mounted, pleasantly excited by a slight sense of 
impropriety in my proceedings, and had almost 
reached the small landing at the top of the staircase 
when I was confronted by a young peasant girl, 
who, startled and alarmed by my appearance, stood 
there as if to remonstrate against my going farther. 
But, the blood of my curiosity and love of adven- 
ture was ‘ up 9 by this time; I moved on, taking no 
notice whatever of her evident terror and half-whis- 
pered, stammering remonstrances. My whole at- 
tention was absorbed by the strangeness of the in- 
terior which I began to catch sight of. The door 
of a room on my right was wide open, revealing a 
sort of thick hedge or wall of close-growing cactus 
and other unfamiliar, weird-looking exotic shrubs. 
They were of unusual height, and though I have 


307 


The Abbaye de Cerisy 

visited many botanical gardens in my time, and had 
even possessed, in my own conservatories, many 
curious foreign plants, I have never seen any to 
equal these, nor could I have given a name to any 
one of them. They must have been there, growing 
where they stood, for many and many a year; for 
their branches, in several cases, reached up to the 
old black beams of the apartment, and the lower 
part of this strange hedge, so to call it, quite con- 
cealed from view, where I first stood, the room 
behind. But a step or two forward and a slight 
turn to the right showed me more. I perceived 
that the hedge stopped, leaving an entrance way, as 
it were, and standing just in it, most of the interior 
was revealed to me. I saw before me a fair-sized 
room, at once strongly impressing me by its ancient 
and old-world aspect. In one corner, that on my 
right, stood a large square black oak bedstead of 
the style known as ‘ Henri IV the faded, though 
well-preserved hangings and coverlet were of the 
same period, for to an eye trained and accustomed 
to judge of such things almost from childhood, thus 
much can be perceived at a glance. The dark 
wooden chairs, their seats covered with tapestry, 
were of the same period; and had evidently, so 
bravely to stand the wear and tear of centuries, 
been of the very best materials. A fairly good fire 


308 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

was burning in the open stone hearth, and some 
preparation for a meal seemed to be simmering 
upon it, but my gaze was drawn upwards by the 
really splendid carving of the old mantelpiece and 
jambs, and I was on the point of moving forward 
to examine it more closely, when my presumption 
was suddenly arrested. From the farther side of 
the room came a deep sepulchral voice. 

“ 4 Madame,’ it said — I can hear it now — 4 que 
demandez-vous? ’ 1 and turning toward the left, 
where the afternoon light happened to fall, I saw, 
half concealed by a large olive-green colored cur- 
tain of heavy cloth, the strangest being my eyes 
have ever rested upon. I did not see the whole of 
the figure ; it remained half shrouded by the curtain, 
and by the screen of plants I have tried to describe, 
but the face was very plainly visible. Whether it 
was that of a man or a woman I have never been 
able to decide ; the unuttered exclamation that rose 
to my lips was a strange one. 

“ 4 That is the face of a Bourbon! ’ 

44 For familiar to me from my earliest years have 
been the strongly marked, to me, unmistakable fea- 
tures of that unfortunate race. 

44 The snow-white hair of the mysterious being 
was drawn back from the forehead and concealed 


1 What do you want? 


309 


The Abbaye de Cerisy 

by some kind of skull-cap or cowl, again covered in 
its turn by something black and floating like a veil ; 
a black cape or mantle shrouded as much of the rest 
of the body as was visible. The figure neither rose 
nor moved, but remained seated in front of a small 
table covered with books, papers, and writing ma- 
terials, and as I stood, half-stunned, again came the 
deep voice, accompanied this time by a glance of 
the haughtiest and sternest — 

“ ‘ Que voulez-vous, Madame? On n’entre pas 
ici.’ 1 

“ My position was not a dignified one, only my 
curiosity had supported me so far! But, notwith- 
standing its increasing intensity, I dared not per- 
sist. With one glance round the extraordinary 
scene, a glance that has printed it forever on my 
memory, and hastily murmured words of respectful 
apology, I retreated, to find myself once more on 
the landing outside, where the peasant girl, by this 
time almost imbecile with terror, shiveringly 
awaited me. I don’t know if she half pushed or 
pulled me down the stairs — but once outside, I 
turned and asked her the reason of her extraordi- 
nary behavior. After all, I had done no harm; I 
was only interested in the old buildings ; what was 
she afraid of, and who was the person she served? 

1 What do you want? There is no admittance here. 


310 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ I could obtain no satisfactory reply. She had 
not been long there, she said ; she belonged to a dis- 
tant part of the country — as, indeed, her costume 
showed — and could tell me nothing of the Abbaye 
nor its inmates. Then she reentered the building, 
and closed the door in my face — not rudely, but as 
if completely indifferent to any but the one idea of 
getting me off the premises. Poor girl, I dare say 
a reprimand of the sharpest was in store for her! 

“ I retraced my steps in the direction where I had 
left my friends. A few paces farther on, I almost 
ran against an aged priest, evidently bound for the 
place I had just left. An expression of surprise 
and annoyance crossed his face on seeing me, or 
rather the direction whence I came. He did not 
speak, but stopped short, and stood there motion- 
less, openly watching me till I passed through a 
great archway in a wall a little farther on, and was 
lost to his sight. 

“ Close at hand were my friends, somewhat im- 
patiently awaiting my return by the famous fish- 
pond. Its legend — a gruesome one enough, of its 
having been used as a burial-place for their pris- 
oners by some bloodthirsty monks of old, to the 
benefit of the fat carp and pike — had been dis- 
cussed and quarreled over sufficiently, and the 
whole party was now anxious to get home to the 


311 


The Abbaye de Cerisy 

cheery chateau. During the drive thither, I told 
my story, which was received with great interest. 
Various plans were formed for revisiting Cerisy, 
and trying to solve the mystery, but somehow they 
were never carried out. Nor did the inquiries set 
on foot in the neighborhood about the strange in- 
habitant of the ruined Abbaye, ever bring anything 
to light concerning him. Our party shortly after 
broke up. I never revisited my friends at their 
chateau. Something prevented my going to them 
the following year, and after that I had no longer 
any reason for doing so, Troubles, as unexpected 
as undeserved, fell thickly on our kind hosts, the 
once happy family there; and notwithstanding my 
curiosity about the being I have described, I never 
could make up my mind to revisit the neighborhood 
of Cerisy.” 

Madame de Romars stopped. Clemency Poyn- 
sett looked up inquiringly. 

“How sad!” she said feelingly. “Yes, dear 
madame, I well understand. But, tell me, please 
— do you really think it possible — had you the feel- 
ing that the figure you saw was — was perhaps 
really Louis XVII — the poor little prince, grown 
into — Stay, would he have been as old as the re- 
cluse of the Abbaye at the time you named; about 
the year 1844, was it not? ” 


312 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ He was born in 178 5,” said the Marquise* 
“ He would have been, therefore, fifty-nine at the 
date of my adventure. Certainly, the person I saw 
looked much older than that, to judge in an ordi- 
nary way. But then — consider what the Prince 
went through! Had he lived, it is scarcely to be 
expected he would ever have recovered his health 
bodily or mental ; at least, he could never have been 
like other people. No; if Louis XVII lived, I can 
scarcely help picturing him to myself at sixty as at 
best much such a prematurely aged, fearfully 
marked human being as the strange vision I came 
across. I hope it was not he — I cannot endure to 
think it was — to picture the long monotonous years 
that must have passed in that sad captivity of con- 
cealment, and, in all probability, in great physical 
suffering too. For I think the poor creature I saw 
must have been paralyzed or something of that kind. 
Yet there was such dignity, such reserve and pres- 
ence about the strange being — no angry chatter or 
scolding; just the few cold, haughty, yet not un- 
courteous words I have repeated.” 

“ Whoever it was — man or woman — must have 
been quite of the upper classes,” said Miss Poyn- 
sett. 

“ O dear, yes — a thousand times, yes. The tone, 
the accent, the manner — all showed it. Poor old 


The Abbaye de Cerisy 313 

man, for I think it was a man, Louis XVII or not 
— there was a sad story shut up in that strange 
room — a story almost certainly connected with that 
awful time a century ago. How often since, I have 
wished I could have shown some kindness to the 
recluse, infused some little brightness into that al- 
most unearthly life! But it could not have been. 

And whoever it was, it is all over now ” 

“ I, too, hope it was not the Prince,” said Clem- 
ency, “ strangely fascinating though the idea is. 
But there were the Bourbon features.” 

“ Yes,” agreed her old friend. “ There were 
those, undoubtedly; the unmistakable Bourbon 
features.” 



LOST IN THE FOG 
Noah Brooks 

“ Down with your helm ! you’ll have us hard and 
fast aground! ” 

My acquaintance with Captain Booden was at 
that time somewhat limited, and if possible I knew 
less of the difficult and narrow exit from Bolinas 
Bay than I did of Captain Booden. So with great 
trepidation I jammed the helm hard down, and the 
obedient little Lively Polly fell off easily, and we 
were over the bar and gliding gently along under 
the steep bluff of the Mesa, whose rocky edge rising 
sheer from the beach and crowned with dry grass, 
314 


315 


Lost in the Fog 

rose far above the pennon of the little schooner. I 
did not intend to deceive Captain Booden, but be- 
ing anxious to work my way down to San Fran- 
cisco, I had shipped as “ able seaman ” on the 
Lively Polly , though it was a long day since I had 
handled a foresheet or anything bigger than the 
little plungers which hover about Bolinas Bay, and 
latterly I had been ranching it at Point Reyes. We 
had glided out of the narrow channel which is 
skirted on one side by a long sand-spit that curves 
around and makes the southern and western shelter 
of the bay, and on the other side by a huge elevated 
tongue of tableland, called by the inhabitants there- 
abouts the Mesa. High, precipitous, perpendicu- 
lar, level, and dotted with farmhouses, this singu- 
lar bit of land stretches several miles out southward 
to sea, bordered with a rocky beach, and tapered off 
into the wide ocean with Duxbury Reef — a danger- 
ous rocky reef, curving down to the southward and 
almost always white with foam, save when the sea is 
calm, and then the great lazy green waves eddy 
noiselessly over the half-hidden rocks, or slip like 
oil over the dreadful dangers which they hide. 

Behind us was the lovely bay of Bolinas, blue 
and sparkling in the summer afternoon sun, its bor- 
ders dotted with thrifty ranches, and the woody 
ravines and bristling Tamalpais Range rising over 


316 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

all. The tide was running out, and only a peaceful 
swash whispered along the level sandy beach on our 
left, where the busy sandpiper chased the playful 
wave as it softly rose and fell along the shore. On 
the higher centre of the sand-spit which shuts in the 
bay on that side, a row of ashy-colored gulls sunned 
themselves, and blinked at us sleepily as we drifted 
slowly out of the channel, our breeze cut off by the 
Mesa, that hemmed us in on the right. 

I have told you that I did not much pretend to 
seamanship, but I was not sorry that I had taken 
passage on the Lively Polly , for there is always 
something novel and fascinating to me in coasting 
a region which I have heretofore known only by its 
hills, canons, and sea-beaches. The trip is usually 
made from Bolinas Bay to San Francisco in five 
or six hours, when wind and tide favor ; and I could 
bear being knocked about by Captain Booden for 
that length of time, especially as there was one 
other hand on board — “ Lanky ” he was called — 
but whether a foremast hand or landsman I do not 
know. He had been teaching school at Jaybird 
Canon, and was a little more awkward with the 
running rigging of the Lively Polly than I was. 
Captain Booden was, therefore, the main reliance 
of the little twenty-ton schooner, and if her deck- 
load of firewood and cargo of butter and eggs ever 


317 


Lost in the Fog 

reached a market, the skilful and profane skipper 
should have all the credit thereof. 

The wind died away, and the sea, before ruffled 
with a wholesale breeze, grew as calm as a sheet of 
billowy glass, heaving only in long, gentle undula- 
tions on which the sinking sun bestowed a green and 
golden glory, dimmed only by the white fog-bank 
that came drifting slowly up from the Farralones, 
now shut out from view by the lovely haze. Cap- 
tain Booden gazed morosely on the western horizon, 
and swore by a big round oath that we should not 
have a capful of wind if that fog-bank did not lift. 
But we were fairly out of the bay; the Mesa was 
lessening in the distance, and as we drifted slowly 
southward the red-roofed buildings on its level rim 
grew to look like toy-houses, and we heard the dull 
moan of the ebb-tide on Duxbury Reef on our star- 
board bow. The sea grew dead calm and the wind fell 
quite away, but still we drifted southward, passing 
Rocky Point and peering curiously into Pilot Boat 
Cove, which looked so strangely unfamiliar to me 
from the sea, though I had fished in its trout-brooks 
many a day, and had hauled driftwood from the 
rocky beach to Johnson’s ranch in times gone by. 
The tide turned after sundown, and Captain Boo- 
den thought we ought to get a bit of wind then ; but 
it did not come, and the fog crept up and up the 


318 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

glassy sea, rolling in huge wreaths of mist, shutting 
out the surface of the water, and finally the gray 
rocks of North Heads were hidden, and little by 
little the shore was curtained from our view and we 
were becalmed in the fog. 

To say that the skipper swore would hardly de- 
scribe his case. He cursed his luck, his stars, his 
foretop, his main hatch, his lubberly crew — Lanky 
and me — and a variety of other persons and things ; 
but all to no avail. Night came on, and the light 
on North Heads gleamed at us with a sickly eye 
through the deepening fog. We had a bit of 
luncheon with us, but no fire, and were fain to con- 
tent ourselves with cold meat, bread, and water, 
hoping that a warm breakfast in San Francisco 
would make some amends for our present short ra- 
tions. But the night wore on, and we were still 
tumbling about in the rising sea without wind 
enough to fill our sails, a rayless sky overhead, and 
with breakers continually under our lee. Once we 
saw lights on shore, and heard the sullen thud of 
rollers that smote against the rocks; it was aggra- 
vating, as the fog lifted for a space, to see the cheer- 
ful windows of the Cliff House, and almost hear 
the merry calls of pleasure-seekers as they muffled 
themselves in their wraps and drove gayly up the 
hill, reckless of the poor homeless mariners who 


319 


Lost in the Fog 

were drifting comfortlessly about so near the shore 
they could not reach. We got out the sweeps and 
rowed lustily for several hours, steering by the com- 
pass and taking our bearings from the cliff. 

But we lost our bearings in the maze of currents 
in which we soon found ourselves, and the dim shore 
melted away in the thickening fog. To add to our 
difficulties, Captain Booden put his head most fre- 
quently into the cuddy; and when it emerged, he 
smelt dreadfully of gin. Lanky and I held a secret 
council, in which we agreed, in case he became in- 
toxicated, we would rise up in mutiny and work 
the vessel on our own account. He shortly “ lost 
his head,” as Lanky phrased it; and slipping down 
on the deck, went quietly to sleep. At four o’clock 
in the morning the gray fog grew grayer with the 
early dawning; and as I gazed with weary eyes into 
the vague unknown that shut us in, Booden roused 
himself and seizing the tiller from my hand, bawled, 
“ ’Bout ship, you swab, we’re on the Farralones ! ” 
And sure enough, there loomed right under our 
starboard quarter a group of conical rocks, steeply 
rising from the restless blue sea. Their wild white 
sides were crowded with chattering sea-fowl; and 
far above, like a faint nimbus in the sky, shone the 
feeble rays of the lighthouse lantern, now almost 
quenched by the dull gleam of day that crept up 


320 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

from the water. The helm was jammed hard down. 
There was no time to get out sweeps ; but still drift- 
ing helplessly, we barely grazed the bare rocks of 
the islet, and swung clear, slinking once more into 
the gloom. 

Our scanty stock of provisions and water was 
gone; but there was no danger of starvation, for 
the generous product of the henneries and dairies 
of Bolinas filled the vessel’s hold — albeit raw eggs 
and butter without bread might only serve as a 
barrier against famine. So we drifted and tumbled 
about — still no wind and no sign of the lifting of 
the fog. Once in a while it would roll upward and 
show a long, flat expanse of water, tempting us to 
believe that the blessed sky was coming out at last; 
but soon the veil fell again, and we aimlessly won- 
dered where we were and whither we were drifting. 
There is something awful and mysterious in the 
shadowy nothingness that surrounds one in a fog at 
sea. You fancy that out of that impenetrable mist 
may suddenly burst some great disaster or danger. 
Strange shapes appear to be forming themselves in 
the obscurity out of which they emerge, and the eye 
is wearied beyond expression with looking into a 
vacuity which continually promises to evolve into 
something, but never does. 

Thus idly drifting, we heard, first, the creaking 


Lost in the Fog 321 

of a block, then a faint wash of sea; and out of the 
white depths of the fog came the bulky hull of a 
full-rigged ship. Her sails were set, but she made 
scarcely steerage way. Her rusty sides and general 
look bespoke a long voyage just concluding; and 
we found on hailing her that she was the British 
ship Marathon , from Calcutta for San Francisco. 
We boarded the Marathon , though almost in sight 
of our own port, with something of the feeling that 
shipwrecked seamen may have when they reach 
land. It was odd that we, lost and wandering as 
we were, should be thus encountered in the vast 
unknown where we were drifting by a strange ship ; 
and though scarcely two hours’ sail from home, 
should be supplied with bread and water by a 
Britisher from the Indies. We gave the men all 
the information we had about the pilots, whom we 
wanted so much to meet ourselves ; and after follow- 
ing slowly for a few hours by the huge side of our 
strange friend, parted company — the black hull 
and huge spars of the Indiaman gradually lessen- 
ing in the mist that shut her from our view. We 
had touched a chord that bound us to our fellow- 
men; but it was drawn from our hands, and the 
unfathomable abyss in which we floated had swal- 
lowed up each human trace, except what was com- 
prised on the contracted deck of the Lively Polly , 


322 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

where Captain Booden sat glumly whittling, and 
Lanky meditatively peered after the vanished 
Marathon , as though his soul and all his hopes had 
gone with her. The deck, with its load of cord- 
wood; the sails and rigging; the sliding-hutch of 
the little cuddy; and all the features of the Lively 
Polly, but yesterday so unfamiliar, were now as 
odiously wearisome as though I had known them 
for a century. It seemed as if I had never known 
any other place. 

All that day we floated aimlessly along, moved 
only by the sluggish currents, which shifted occa- 
sionally, but generally bore us westward and south- 
ward; not a breath of wind arose, and our sails 
were as useless as though we had been on dry land. 
Night came on again, and found us still entirely 
without reckoning and as completely “ at sea ” as 
before. To add to our discomfort, a drizzling rain, 
unusual for the season of the year, set in, and we 
cowered on the wet deck-load, more than ever dis- 
gusted with each other and the world. During the 
night a big ocean steamer came plunging and crash- 
ing through the darkness, her lights gleaming redly 
through the dense medium as she cautiously felt 
her way past us, falling off a few points as she 
heard our hail. We lay right in her path, but with 
tin horns and a wild Indian yell from the versatile 


323 


Lost in the Fog 

Lanky managed to make ourselves heard, and the 
mysterious stranger disappeared in the fog as sud- 
denly as she had come, and we were once more alone 
in the darkness. 

The night wore slowly away, and we made out to 
catch a few hours’ sleep, standing “ watch and 
watch ” with each other of our slender crew. Day 
dawned again, and we broke our fast with the last 
of the Marathon's biscuit, having “ broken cargo ” 
to eke out our cold repast with some of the Bolinas 
butter and eggs which we were taking to a most un- 
expected market. 

Suddenly, about six o’clock in the morning, we 
heard the sound of breakers ahead, and above the 
sullen roar of the surf I distinctly heard the tin- 
klings of a bell. We got out our sweeps and had 
commenced to row wearily once more, when the 
fog lifted and before us lay the blessed land. A 
high range of sparsely wooded hills, crowned with 
rocky ledges, and with abrupt slopes covered with 
dry brown grass, running to the water’s edge, 
formed the background of the picture. Nearer, a 
tongue of high land, brushy and rocky, made out 
from the main shore, and curving southward, 
formed a shelter to what seemed a harbor within. 
Against the precipitous point the sea broke with 
a heavy blow, and a few ugly peaks of rock lifted 


324 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

their heads above the heaving green of the sea. 
High up above the sky-line rose one tall, sharp, 
blue peak, yet veiled in the floating mist, but its 
base melted away into a mass of verdure that 
stretched from the shore far up the mountain-side. 
Our sweeps were now used to bring us around the 
point and cautiously pulling in, we opened a lovely 
bay bordered with orchards and vineyards, in the 
midst of which was a neat village, glittering white 
in the sunshine, and clustered around an old-fash- 
ioned mission church, whose quaint gable and tower 
reminded us of the buildings of the early Spanish 
settlers of the country. As we neared the shore 
(there was no landing-place) we could see an un- 
wonted commotion in the clean streets, and a flag 
was run up to the top of a white staff that stood 
in the midst of a plaza. Captain Booden returned 
the compliment by hoisting the Stars and Stripes 
at our mainmast head, but was sorely bothered with 
the mingled dyes of the flag on shore. A puff of 
air blew out its folds, and to our surprise disclosed 
the Mexican national standard. 

“ Blast them greasers,” said the patriotic skipper, 
“ if they ain’t gone and h’isted a Mexican cactus 
flag, then I’m blowed.” He seriously thought of 
hauling down his beloved national colors again, re- 
senting the insult of hoisting & foreign flag on 


325 


Lost in the Fog 

American soil. He pocketed the affront, however, 
remarking that “ they probably knew that a 
Bolinas butter-boat was not much of a fightist, any- 
way.” 

We dropped anchor gladly, Captain Booden be- 
ing wholly at a loss as to our whereabouts. We 
judged that we were somewhere south of the 
Golden Gate, but what town this was that slept so 
tranquilly in the summer sun, and what hills were 
these that walled in the peaceful scene from the 
rest of the world, we could not tell. The village 
seemed awakening from its serene sleepiness, and 
one by one the windows of the adobe cottages swung 
open as if the people rubbed their long-closed eyes 
at some unwonted sight; and the doors gradually 
opened as though their dumb lips would hail us and 
ask who were these strangers that vexed the quiet 
waters of their bay. But two small fishing-boats 
lay at anchor, and these Booden said reminded him 
of Christopher Columbus or Noah’s Ark, they were 
so clumsy and antique in build. 

We hauled our boat up alongside, and all hands 
got in and went ashore. As we landed, a little 
shudder seemed to go through the sleepy old place, 
as if it had been rudely disturbed from its comfort- 
able nap, and a sudden sob of sea air swept through 
the quiet streets as though the insensate houses had 


326 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

actually breathed the weary sigh of awaking. The 
buildings were low and white, with dark-skinned 
children basking in the doors, and grass hammocks 
swinging beneath open verandas. There were no 
stores, no sign of business, and no sound of vehicles 
or labor; all was as decorous and quiet, to use the 
skipper’s description, “ as if the people had slicked 
up their dooryards, whitewashed their houses, and 
gone to bed.” It was just like a New England 
Sabbath in a Mexican village. 

And this fancy was further colored by a strange 
procession which now met us as we went up from 
the narrow beach, having first made fast our boat. 
A lean Mexican priest, with an enormous shovel 
hat and particularly shabby cassock, came toward 
us, followed by a motley crowd of Mexicans, 
prominent among whom was a pompous old man 
clad in a seedy Mexican uniform and wearing a 
trailing rapier at his side. The rest of the proces- 
sion was brought up with a crowd of shy women, 
dark-eyed and tawny and all poorly clad, though 
otherwise comfortable enough in condition. These 
hung back and wonderingly looked at the strange 
faces, as though they had never seen the like before. 
The old padre lifted his skinny hands, and said 
something in Spanish which I did not understand. 

“ Why, the old mummy is slinging his popish 


327 


Lost in the Fog 

blessings at us ! ” This was Lanky’s interpretation 
of the kindly priest’s paternal salutation. And, 
sure enough, he was welcoming us to the shore of 
San Ildefonso with holy fervor and religious 
phrase. 

“ I say,” said Booden, a little testily, “ what did 
you say was the name of this place, and where away 
does it lay from ’Frisco? ” In very choice Cas- 
tilian, as Lanky declared, the priest rejoined that 
he did not understand the language in which Boo- 
den was speaking. “ Then bring on somebody that 
does,” rejoined that irreverent mariner, when due 
interpretation had been made. The padre pro- 
tested that no one in the village understood the 
English tongue. The skipper gave a long, low 
whistle of suppressed astonishment, and wondered 
if we had drifted down to Lower California in two 
days and nights and had struck a Mexican settle- 
ment. The colors on the flagstaff and the absence 
of any Americans gave some show of reason to this 
startling conclusion; and Lanky, who was now the 
interpreter of the party, asked the name of the 
place, and was again told that it was San Ildefonso; 
but when he asked what country it was in and how 
far it was to San Francisco, he was met with a po- 
lite “ I do not understand you, Senor.” 

Here was a puzzle; becalmed in a strange port 


328 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

only two days’ drift from the city of San Francisco; 
a town which the schoolmaster declared was not 
laid down on any map; a population that spoke 
only Spanish and did not know English when they 
heard it; a Mexican flag flying over the town, and 
an educated priest who did not know what we 
meant when we asked how far it was to San Fran- 
cisco. Were we bewitched? 

Accepting a hospitable invitation from the padre, 
we sauntered up to the plaza, where we were 
ushered into a long, low room, which might once 
have been a military barrack-room. It was neatly 
whitewashed and had a hard clay floor, and along 
the walls were a few ancient firelocks and a vener- 
able picture of “ His Excellency, General Santa 
Ana, President of the Republic of Mexico,” as a 
legend beneath it set forth. 

Breakfast of chickens, vegetables, bread, and an 
excellent sort of country wine (this last being 
served in a big earthen bottle) was served up to us 
on the long unpainted table that stood in the middle 
of the room. During the repast our host, the priest, 
sat with folded hands intently regarding us, while 
the rest of the people clustered around the door and 
open windows, eying us with indescribable and 
incomprehensible curiosity. If we had been visi- 
tors from the moon we could not have attracted 


329 


Lost in the Fog 

more attention. Even the stolid Indians, a few of 
whom strolled lazily about, came and gazed at us 
until the pompous old man in faded Mexican uni- 
form drove them noisily away from the window, 
where they shut out the light and the pleasant 
morning air, perfumed with heliotropes, verbenas, 
and sw r eet herbs that grew luxuriantly about the 
houses. 

The padre had restrained his curiosity out of 
rigid politeness until we had eaten, when he began 
by asking, “ Did our galleon come from Manila? ” 
We told him that we only came from Bolinas; 
whereat he said once more, with a puzzled look of 
pain, “ I do not understand you, Senor.” Then 
pointing through the open doorway to where the 
Lively Polly peacefully floated at anchor, he asked 
what ensign was that which floated at her masthead. 
Lanky proudly, but with some astonishment, re- 
plied: “ That’s the American flag, Senor.” At this 
the seedy old man in uniform eagerly said: 
“ Americanos ! Americanos ! why, I saw some of 
those people and that flag at Monterey.” Lanky 
asked him if Monterey was not full of Americans 
and did not have plenty of flags. The Ancient re- 
plied that he did not know; it was a long time since 
he had been there. Lanky observed that perhaps 
he had never been there. “ I was there in 1835,” 


330 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

said the Ancient. This curious speech being inter- 
preted to Captain Booden, that worthy remarked 
that he did not believe that he had seen a white man 
since. 

After an ineffectual effort to explain to the com- 
pany where Bolinas was, we rose and went out for 
a view of the town. It was beautifully situated on 
a gentle rise which swelled up from the water’s edge 
and fell rapidly off in the rear of the town into a 
deep ravine, where a brawling mountain stream 
supplied a little flouring-mill with motive power. 
Beyond the ravine were small fields of grain, beans 
and lentils on the rolling slopes, and back of these 
rose the dark, dense vegetation of low hills, while 
over all were the rough and ragged ridges of moun- 
tains closing in all the scene. The town itself, as I 
have said, was white and clean; the houses were 
low-browed, with windows secured by wooden shut- 
ters, only a few glazed sashes being seen anywhere. 
Out of these openings in the thick adobe walls of 
the humble homes of the villagers flashed the curi- 
ous, the abashed glances of many a dark-eyed 
senorita, who fled, laughing, as we approached. 
The old church was on the plaza, and in its odd- 
shaped turret tinkled the little bell whose notes had 
sounded the morning angelus when we were knock- 
ing about in the fog outside. High up on its 


331 


Lost in the Fog 

quaintly arched gable was inscribed in antique let- 
ters “ 1796.” In reply to a sceptical remark from 
Lanky, Booden declared that “ the old shell looked 
as though it might have been built in the time of 
Ferdinand and Isabella, for that matter.” The 
worthy skipper had a misty idea that all old Span- 
ish buildings were built in the days of these famous 
sovereigns. 

Hearing the names of Ferdinand and Isabella, 
the padre gravely and reverentially asked: “And 
is the health of His Excellency, General Santa 
Ana, whom God protect, still continued to him? ” 

With great amazement, Lanky replied: “ Santa 
Ana! why, the last heard of him was that he was 
keeping a cockpit in Havana; some of the news- 
papers published an obituary of him about six 
months ago; but I believe he is alive yet some- 
where.” 

A little flush of indignation mantled the old 
man’s cheek, and with a tinge of severity in his 
voice he said : “ I have heard that shameful scandal 
about our noble President once before, but you 
must excuse me if I ask you not to repeat it. It is 
true he took away our Pious Fund some years since, 
but he is still our revered President, and I would 
not hear him ill-spoken of any more than our puis- 
sant and mighty Ferdinand, of whom you just 


332 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

spoke — may he rest in glory ! ” and here the good 
priest crossed himself devoutly. 

“What is the old priest jabbering about?” 
asked Captain Booden, impatiently; for he was in 
haste to “ get his bearings ” and be off. When 
Lanky replied, he burst out: “ Tell him that Santa 
Ana is not President of Mexico any more than I 
am, and that he hasn’t amounted to a row of pins 
since California was part of the United States.” 

Lanky faithfully interpreted this fling at the ex- 
president. Whereupon the padre, motioning to the 
Ancient to put up his rapier, which had leaped out 
of its rusty scabbard, said, “ Nay, Senor, you would 
insult an old man. We have never been told yet 
by our government that the Province of California 
was alienated from the great Republic of Mexico, 
and we owe allegiance to none save the nation whose 
flag we love so well ”; and the old man turned his 
tear-dimmed eyes toward the ragged standard of 
Mexico that drooped from the staff in the plaza. 
Continuing, he said, “ Our noble country has 
strangely forgotten us, and though we watch the 
harbor-entrance year after year, no tidings ever 
comes. The galleon that was to bring us stores has 
never been seen on the horizon yet, and we seem 
lost in the fog.” 

The schoolmaster of Jaybird Canon managed to 


333 


Lost in the Fog 

tell us what the priest had said, and then asked 
when he had last heard of the outside world. “ It 
was in 1837,” said he sadly, “ when we sent a courier 
to the Mission del Carmelo, at Monterey, for tid- 
ings from New Spain. He never came back, and 
the great earthquake which shook the country here- 
about opened a huge chasm across the country just 
back of the Sierra yonder, and none dared to cross 
over to the main land. The saints have defended 
us in peace, and it is the will of Heaven that we 
shall stay here by ourselves until the Holy Virgin, 
in answer to our prayers, shall send us deliverance.” 

Here was a new revelation. This was an old 
Spanish Catholic mission, settled in 1796, called 
San Ildefonso, which had evidently been overlooked 
for nearly forty years, and had quietly slept in an 
unknown solitude while the country had been trans- 
ferred to the United States from the flag that still 
idly waved over it. Lost in the fog! Here was a 
whole town lost in a fog of years. Empires and 
dynasties had risen and fallen; the world had re- 
peatedly been shaken to its centre, and this people 
had heeded it not ; a great civil war had ravaged the 
country to which they now belonged, and they knew 
not of it; poor Mexico herself had been torn with 
dissensions and had been insulted with an empire, 
and these peaceful and weary watchers for tidings 


334 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

from “ New Spain ” had recked nothing of all these 
things. All around them the busy state of Cali- 
fornia was scarred with the eager pick of gold-seek- 
ers or the shining share of the husbandman; towns 
and cities had sprung up where these patriarchs had 
only known of vast cattle ranges or sleepy missions 
of the Roman Catholic Fathers. They knew noth- 
ing of the great city of San Francisco, with its busy 
marts and crowded harbor ; and thought of its broad 
bay — if they thought of it at all — as the lovely 
shore of Yerba Buena, bounded by bleak hills and 
almost unvexed by any keel. The political storms 
of forty years had gone hurtless over their heads, 
and in a certain sort of dreamless sleep, San Ilde- 
fonso had still remained true to the red, white, and 
green flag that had long since disappeared from 
every part of the state save here, where it was still 
loved and revered as the banner of the soil. 

The social and political framework of the town 
had been kept up through all these years. There 
had been no connection with the fountain of polit* 
ical power, but the town was ruled by the legally 
elected Ayuntamiento, or Common Council, of 
which the Ancient, Senor Apolonario Maldonado, 
was President or Alcalde. They were daily look- 
ing for advices from Don Jose Castro, Governor of 
the loyal province of California; and so they had 


335 


L ost in the Fog 

been looking daily for forty years. We asked if 
they had not heard from any of the prying Yankees 
who crowd the country. Father Ignacio — for that 
was the padre’s name — replied, “Yes; five years 
ago, when the winter rains had just set in, a tall, 
spare man, who talked some French and some 
Spanish, came down over the mountains with a pack 
containing pocket-knives, razors, soap, perfumery, 
laces, and other curious wares, and besought our 
people to purchase. We have not much coin, but 
were disposed to treat him Christianly, until he did 
declare that President General Santa Ana, whom 
may the saints defend! was a thief and gambler, and 
had gambled away the Province of California to 
the United States; whereupon we drave him hence, 
the Ayuntamiento sending a trusty guard to see 
him two leagues from the borders of the pueblo. 
But months after, we discovered his pack and such 
of his poor bones as the wild beasts of prey had not 
carried off, at the base of a precipice where he had 
fallen. His few remains and his goods were to- 
gether buried on the mountain-side and I lamented 
that we had been so hard with him. But the saints 
forbid that he should go back and tell where the 
people of San Udefonso were waiting to hear from 
their own neglectful country, which may Heaven 
defend, bless and prosper.” 


336 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

The little town took on a new interest to us cold 
outsiders after hearing its strange and almost im- 
probable story. We could have scarcely believed 
that San Ildefonso had actually been overlooked 
in the transfer of the country from Mexico to the 
United States, and had for nearly forty years been 
hidden away between the Sierra and the sea; but if 
we were disposed to doubt the word of the good 
father, here was intrinsic evidence of the truth of 
the narrative. There were no Americans here ; only 
the remnants of the old Mexican occupation and 
the civilized Indians. No traces of later civilization 
could be found ; but the simple dresses, tools, imple- 
ments of husbandry, and household utensils were 
such as I have seen in the half -civilized wilds of 
Central America. The old mill in the canon be- 
hind the town was a curiosity of clumsiness, and 
nine-tenths of the water-power of the arroya that 
supplied it were wasted. 

Besides, until now, who ever heard of such a town 
in California as San Ildefonso? Upon what map 
can any such headland and bay be traced? and 
where are the historic records of the pueblo whose 
well-defined boundaries lay palpably before us? I 
have dwelt upon this point, about which I naturally 
have some feeling, because of the sceptical criti- 
cism which my narrative has since provoked. 


337 


Lost in the Fog 

There are some people in the world who never will 
believe anything that they have not seen, touched, 
or tasted for themselves ; California has her share of 
such. 

Captain Booden was disposed to reject Father 
Ignacio’s story, until I called his attention to the 
fact that this was a tolerable harbor for small craft, 
and yet had never before been heard of; that he 
never knew of such a town, and that if any of his 
numerous associates in the marine profession knew 
of the town or harbor of San Ildefonso, he surely 
w r ould have heard of it from them. He restrained 
his impatience to be off long enough to allow Fa- 
ther Ignacio to gather from us a few chapters of 
the world’s history for forty years past; but the 
discovery of gold in California, the settlement of 
the country and the Pacific railroad were not so 
much account to him, somehow, as the condition of 
Europe and Mexico. 

I was glad to find that we were more readily be- 
lieved by Father Ignacio and the old Don than our 
Yankee predecessor had been; perhaps we were be- 
lieved more on his corroborative evidence. The 
priest, however, politely declined to believe all we 
said — that was evident — and the Don steadily re- 
fused to believe that California had been trans- 
ferred to the United States. It was a little touch- 


338 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

in g to see Father Ignacio’s doubts and hopes strug- 
gle in his withered face as he heard in a few brief 
sentences the history of his beloved land and church 
for forty years past. His eye kindled or it was be- 
dewed with tears as he listened, and an occasional 
flash of resentment flushed his cheek when he heard 
something that shook his ancient faith in the estab- 
lished order of things. To a proposition to take a 
passage with us to San Francisco, he replied 
warmly that he would on no account leave his flock, 
nor attempt to thwart the manifest will of Heaven 
that the town should remain unheard of until de- 
livered from its long sleep by the same agencies that 
had cut it off from the rest of the world. Neither 
would he allow any of the people to come with us. 

And so we parted. We went out with the turn 
of the tide, Father Ignacio and the Ancient accom- 
panying us to the beach, followed by a crowd of the 
townsfolk, who carried for us water and provisions 
for a longer voyage than ours promised to be. The 
venerable priest raised his hands in parting blessing 
as we shoved off, and I saw two big tears roll down 
the furrowed face of Senor Maldonado, who looked 
after us as a stalwart old warrior might look at the 
departure of a band of hopeful comrades leaving 
him to fret in monkish solitude while they went off 
to the wars again. Wind and tide served, and in a 


339 


Lost in the Fog 

few minutes the Lively Polly rounded the point, 
and looking back, I saw the yellow haze of the after- 
noon sun sifted sleepily over all the place; the knots 
of white-clad people standing statuesque and mo- 
tionless as they gazed; the flag of Mexico faintly 
waving in the air; and with a sigh of relief a slum- 
brous veil seemed to fall over all the scene, and as 
our boat met the roll of the current outside the 
headland, the gray rocks of the point shut out the 
fading view, and we saw the last of San Ildefonso. 

Captain Booden had gathered enough from the 
people to know that we were somewhere south of 
San Francisco (the Lively Polly had no chart or 
nautical instruments on board of course), and so 
he determined to coast cautiously along northward, 
marking the shore line in order to be able to guide 
other navigators to the harbor. But a light mist 
crept down the coast, shutting out the view of the 
headlands, and by midnight we had stretched out 
to sea again, and were once more out of our reck- 
oning. At daybreak, however, the fog lifted, and 
we found ourselves in sight of land, and a brisk 
breeze blowing, we soon made Pigeon Point, and 
before noon were inside the Golden Gate, and 
ended our long and adventurous cruise from Bo- 
linas Bay by hauling into the wharf of San Fran- 


cisco. 


340 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

I have little left to tell. Of the shameful way in 
which our report was received, every newspaper 
reader knows. At first there were some persons, 
men of science and reading, who were disposed to 
believe what we said. I printed in one of the daily 
newspapers an account of what we had discovered, 
giving a full history of San Ildefonso as Father 
Ignacio had given it to us. Of course, as I find 
is usual in such cases, the other newspapers pooh- 
poohed the story their contemporary had published 
to their exclusion, and made themselves very merry 
over what they were pleased to term “ The Great 
San Ildefonso Sell.” 

I prevailed on Captain Booden to make a short 
voyage down the coast in search of the lost port. 
But we never saw the headland, the ridge beyond 
the town, nor anything that looked like these land- 
marks, though we went down as far as San Pedro 
Bay and back twice or three times. It actually did 
seem that the whole locality had been swallowed up, 
or had vanished into air. In vain did I bring the 
matter to the notice of the merchants and scientific 
men of San Francisco. Nobody would fit out an 
exploring expedition by land or sea; those who 
listened at first finally inquired if there was “ any 
money in it.” I could not give an affirmative an- 
swer, and they turned away with the discouraging 


341 


Lost in the Fog 

remark that the California Academy of Natural 
Science and the Society of Pioneers were the only 
bodies interested in the fate of our lost city. Even 
Captain Booden somehow lost all interest in the 
enterprise, and returned to his Bolinas coasting 
with the most stolid indifference. I combated the 
attacks of the newspapers with facts and deposi- 
tions of my fellow-voyagers as long as I could, un- 
til one day the editor of the Daily Trumpeter (I 
suppress the real name of the sheet) coldly told me 
that the public were tired of the story of San Ilde- 
fonso. It was plain that his mind had been soured 
by the sarcasms of his contemporaries, and he no 
longer believed in me. 

The newspaper controversy died away and was 
forgotten, but I have never relinquished the hope 
of proving the verity of my statements. At one 
time I expected to establish the truth, having heard 
that one Zedekiah Murch had known a Yankee 
peddler who had gone over the mountains of Santa 
Cruz and never was heard of more. But Zede- 
kiah’s memory was feeble, and he only knew that 
such a story prevailed long ago; so that clue was 
soon lost again, and the little fire of enthusiasm 
which it had kindled among a few persons died out. 
I have not yet lost all hope; and when I think of 
the regretful conviction that will force itself upon 


342 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

the mind of good Father Ignacio, that we were, 
after all, impostors, I cannot hear to reflect that I 
may; die and visit the lost town of San Ildefonso no 
more. 


MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE 
Edgar Allan Poe 

Of my country and of my family I have little to 
say. Ill usage and length of years have driven me 
from the one and estranged me from the other. 
Hereditary wealth afforded me an education of no 
common order, and a contemplative turn of mind 
enabled me to methodize the stores which early 
study very diligently garnered up. Beyond all 
things, the works of the German moralists gave me 
great delight; not from any ill-advised admiration 
of their eloquent madness, but from the ease with 
which my habits of rigid thought enabled me to 
detect their falsities. Indeed, a strong relish for 
physical philosophy has, I fear, tinctured my mind 
with a very common error of this age — I mean the 
habit of referring occurrences, even the least sus- 
ceptible of such reference, to the principles of that 
science. Upon the whole, no person could he less 
liable than myself to be led away from the severe 
precincts of truth by the ignes fatui of superstition. 
I have thought proper to premise thus much, lest 
the incredible tale I have to tell should be consid- 
ered rather the raving of a crude imagination, than 
343 


344 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

the positive experience of a mind to which the 
reveries of fancy have been a dead letter and a 
nullity. 

After many years spent in foreign travel, I sailed 
in the year 18 — , from the port of Batavia, in the 
rich and populous island of Java, on a voyage to 
the Archipelago of the Sunda islands. I went as 
passenger — having no other inducement than a 
kind of nervous restlessness which haunted me as a 
fiend. 

Our vessel was a beautiful ship of about four 
hundred tons, copper-fastened, and built at Bom- 
bay of Malabar teak. She was freighted with cot- 
ton-wool and oil, from the Laccadive islands. We 
had also on board coir, jaggeree, ghee, cocoa-nuts, 
and a few cases of opium. The storage was clum- 
sily done and the vessel consequently crank. 

We got under way with a mere breath of wind, 
and for many days stood along the eastern coast of 
Java, without any other incident to beguile the 
monotony of our course than the occasional meet- 
ing with some of the small grabs of the archipelago 
to which we were bound. 

One evening, leaning over the taffrail, I observed 
a very singular, isolated cloud, to the N. W. It 
was remarkable, as well for its color, as from its 


345 


MS. Found in a Bottle 

being the first we had seen since our departure from 
Batavia. I watched it attentively until sunset, 
when it spread all at once to the eastward and west- 
ward, girting in the horizon with a narrow strip of 
vapor, and looking like a long line of low beach. 
My notice was soon afterward attracted by the 
dusky-red appearance of the moon, and the peculiar 
character of the sea. The latter was undergoing a 
rapid change, and the water seemed more than usu- 
ally transparent. Although I could distinctly see 
the bottom, yet, heaving the lead, I found the ship 
in fifteen fathoms. The air now became intoler- 
ably hot, and was loaded with spiral exhalations 
similar to those arising from heated iron. 

As night came on, every breath of wind died 
away, and a more entire calm it is impossible to 
conceive. The flame of a candle burned upon the 
poop without the least perceptible motion, and a 
long hair, held between the finger and thumb, hung 
without the possibility of detecting a vibration. 
However, as the captain said he could perceive no 
indication of danger, and as we were drifting in 
bodily to shore, he ordered the sails to be furled, 
and the anchor let go. No watch was set, and the 
crew, consisting principally of Malays, stretched 
themselves deliberately upon deck. 

I went below — not without a full presentiment 


346 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

of evil. Indeed every appearance warranted me in 
apprehending a Simoon. I told the captain my 
fears; but he paid no attention to what I said, and 
left me without deigning to give a reply. My un- 
easiness, however, prevented me from sleeping, and 
about midnight I went upon deck. As I placed my 
foot upon the upper step of the companion-ladder, 
I was startled by a loud humming noise, like that 
occasioned by the rapid revolution of a mill wheel, 
and before I could ascertain its meaning, I found 
the ship quivering to its centre. In the next in- 
stant, a wilderness of foam hurled us upon our 
beam-ends, and, rushing over us fore and aft, swept 
the entire decks from stem to stern. 

The extreme fury of the blast proved, in a great 
measure, the salvation of the ship. Although com- 
pletely water-logged, yet, as her masts had gone by 
the board, she rose, after a minute, heavily from the 
sea, and, staggering awhile beneath the immense 
pressure of the tempest, finally righted. 

By what miracle I escaped destruction, it is im- 
possible to say. Stunned by the shock of the water, 
I found myself, upon recovery, jammed in between 
the stern-post and rudder. With great difficulty 
I gained my feet, and looking dizzily around, was 
at first struck with the idea of our being among 
breakers; so terrific, beyond the wildest imagina- 


MS. Found in a Bottle 


347 


tion, was the whirlpool of mountainous and foam- 
ing ocean within which we were engulfed. After a 
while I heard the voice of an old Swede, who had 
shipped with us at the moment of our leaving port. 
I hallooed to him with all my strength, and pres- 
ently he came reeling aft. We soon discovered that 
we were the sole survivors of the accident. All on 
deck, with the exception of ourselves, had been 
swept overboard; the captain and mates must have 
perished as they slept, for the cabins were deluged 
with water. 

Without assistance, we could expect to do little 
for the security of the ship, and our exertions were 
at first paralyzed by the momentary expectation of 
going down. Our cable had, of course, parted like 
pack-thread, at the first breath of the hurricane, or 
we should have been instantaneously overwhelmed. 
We scudded with frightful velocity before the sea, 
and the water made clear breaches over us. The 
framework of our stern was shattered excessively, 
and, in almost every respect, we had received con- 
siderable injury; hut to our extreme joy we found 
the pumps unchoked, and that we had made no 
great shifting of our ballast. 

The main fury of the blast had already blown 
over, and we apprehended little danger from the 
violence of the wind; but we looked forward to its 


348 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

total cessation with dismay; well believing, that, in 
our shattered condition, we should inevitably perish 
in the tremendous swell which would ensue. But 
this very just apprehension seemed by no means 
likely to be soon verified. For five entire days and 
nights — during which our only subsistence was a 
small quantity of jaggeree, procured with great 
difficulty from the forecastle — the hulk flew at a 
rate defying computation, before rapidly succeed- 
ing flaws of wind, which, without equaling the first 
violence of the Simoon, were still more terrific than 
any tempest I had before encountered. Our course 
for the first four days was, with trifling variations, 
S. E. and by S.; and we must have run down the 
coast of New Holland. 

On the fifth day the cold became extreme, al- 
though the wind had hauled round a point more to 
the northward. The sun arose with a sickly yellow 
lustre, and clambered a very few degrees above the 
horizon — emitting no decisive light. There were 
no clouds apparent, yet the wind was upon the in- 
crease, and blew with a fitful and unsteady fury. 
About noon, as nearly as we could guess, our at- 
tention was again arrested by the appearance of the 
sun. It gave out no light, properly so called, but 
a dull and sullen glow without reflection, as if all 
its rays were polarized. Just before sinking within 


MS. Found in a Bottle 


349 


the turgid sea, its central fires suddenly went out, 
as if hurriedly extinguished by some unaccountable 
power. It was a dim, silver-like rim, alone, as it 
rushed down the unfathomable ocean. 

We waited in vain for the arrival of the sixth day 
— that day to me has not arrived — to the Swede, 
never did arrive. Thenceforward we were en- 
shrouded in pitchy darkness, so that we could not 
have seen an object at twenty paces from the ship. 
Eternal night continued to envelop us, all unre- 
lieved by the phosphoric sea-brilliancy to which we 
had been accustomed in the tropics. We observed 
too, that, although the tempest continued to rage 
with unabated violence, there was no longer to be 
discovered the usual appearance of surf, or foam, 
which had hitherto attended us. All around were 
horror, and thick gloom, and a black sweltering 
desert of ebony. 

Superstitious terror crept by degrees into the 
spirit of the old Swede, and my own soul was 
wrapped up in silent wonder. We neglected all 
care of the ship, as worse than useless, and secur- 
ing ourselves, as well as possible, to the stump of 
the mizzen-mast, looked out bitterly into the world 
of ocean. We had no means of calculating time, 
nor could we form any guess of our situation. We 
were, however, well aware of having made farther 


350 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

to the southward than any previous navigators, and 
felt great amazement at not meeting with the usual 
impediments of ice. In the meantime every moment 
threatened to be our last — every mountainous bil- 
low hurried to overwhelm us. The swell surpassed 
anything I had imagined possible, and that we were 
not instantly buried is a miracle. My companion 
spoke of the lightness of our cargo, and reminded 
me of the excellent qualities of our ship ; but I could 
not help feeling the utter hopelessness of hope it- 
self, and prepared myself gloomily for that death 
which I thought nothing could defer beyond an 
hour, as, with every knot of way the ship made, the 
swelling of the black stupendous seas became more 
dismally appalling. At times we gasped for breath 
at an elevation beyond the albatross — at times be- 
came dizzy with the velocity of our descent into 
some watery hell, where the air grew stagnant, and 
no sound disturbed the slumbers of the kraken. 

We were at the bottom of one of these abysses, 
when a quick scream from my companion broke 
fearfully upon the night. “See! see!” cried he, 
shrieking in my ears, “Almighty God! see! see!” 
As he spoke, I became aware of a dull, sullen glare 
of red light which streamed down the sides of the 
vast chasm where we lay, and threw a fitful bril- 
liancy upon our deck. Casting my eyes upwards, 


MS. Found in a Bottle 


351 


I beheld a spectacle which froze the current of my 
blood. At a terrific height directly above us, and 
upon the very verge of the precipitous descent, hov- 
ered a gigantic ship, of perhaps four thousand tons. 
Although upreared upon the summit of a wave 
more than a hundred times her own altitude, her 
apparent size still exceeded that of any ship of the 
line or East Indiaman in existence. Her huge hull 
was of a deep dingy black, unrelieved by any of 
the customary carvings of a ship. A single row of 
brass cannon protruded from her open ports, and 
dashed from their polished surfaces the fires of in- 
numerable battle-lanterns, which swung to and fro 
about her rigging. But what mainly inspired us 
with horror and astonishment, was that she bore up 
under a press of sail in the very teeth of that super- 
natural sea, and of that ungovernable hurricane. 
When we first discovered her, her bows were alone 
to be seen, as she rose slowly from the dim and 
horrible gulf beyond her. For a moment of intense 
terror she paused upon the giddy pinnacle, as if in 
contemplation of her own sublimity, then trembled 
and tottered, and — came down. 

At this instant, I know not what sudden self-pos- 
session came over my spirit. Staggering as far aft 
as I could, I awaited fearlessly the ruin that was to 
overwhelm. Our own vessel was at length ceasing 


352 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

from her struggles, and sinking with her head to the 
sea. The shock of the descending mass struck her, 
consequently, in that portion of her frame which 
was already under water, and the inevitable result 
was to hurl me, with irresistible violence, upon the 
rigging of the stranger. 

As I fell, the ship hove in stays, and went about; 
and to the confusion ensuing I attributed my es- 
cape from the notice of the crew. With little diffi- 
culty I made my way, unperceived, to the main 
hatchway, which was partially open, and soon 
found an opportunity of secreting myself in the 
hold. Why I did so I can hardly tell. An indefi- 
nite sense of awe, which at first sight of the navi- 
gators of the ship had taken hold of my mind, was 
perhaps the principle of my concealment. I was 
unwilling to trust myself with a race of people who 
had offered, to the cursory glance I had taken, so 
many points of vague novelty, doubt, and appre- 
hension. I therefore thought proper to contrive a 
hiding-place in the hold. This I did by removing 
a small portion of the shifting-boards, in such a 
manner as to afford me a convenient retreat be- 
tween the huge timbers of the ship. 

I had scarcely completed my work, when a foot- 
step in the hold forced me to make use of it. A 
man passed by my place of concealment with a fee- 


MS. Found in a Bottle 


353 


ble and unsteady gait. I could not see his face, but 
had an opportunity of observing his general ap- 
pearance. There was about it an evidence of great 
age and infirmity. His knees tottered beneath a 
load of years, and his entire frame quivered under 
the burden. He muttered to himself, in a low 
broken tone, some words of a language which I 
could not understand, and groped in a corner 
among a pile of singular-looking instruments and 
decayed charts of navigation. His manner was a 
wild mixture of the peevishness of second childhood 
and the solemn dignity of a god. He at length 
went on deck, and I saw him no more. 

A feeling, for which I have no name, has taken 
possession of my soul — a sensation which will admit 
of no analysis, to which the lessons of bygone time 
are inadequate, and for which I fear futurity itself 
will offer me no key. To a mind constituted like 
my own, the latter consideration is an evil. I shall 
never — I know that I shall never — be satisfied with 
regard to the nature of my conceptions. Yet it is 
not wonderful that these conceptions are indefinite, 
since they have their origin in sources so utterly 
novel. A new sense — a new entity is added to my 
soul. 


354 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

It is long since I first trod the deck of this ter- 
rible ship, and the rays of my destiny are, I think, 
gathering to a focus. Incomprehensible men! 
Wrapped up in meditations of a kind which I can- 
not divine, they pass me by unnoticed. Conceal- 
ment is utter folly on my part, for the people will 
not see. It was but just now that I passed directly 
before the eyes of the mate; it was no long while 
ago that I ventured into the captain’s own private 
cabin, and took thence the materials with which I 
write, and have written. I shall from time to time 
continue this journal. It is true that I may not 
find an opportunity of transmitting it to the world, 
but I will not fail to’ make the endeavor. At the 
last moment I will enclose the MS. in a bottle, and 
cast it within the sea. 

An incident has occurred which has given me new 
room for meditation. Are such things the opera- 
tion of ungoverned chance? I had ventured upon 
deck and thrown myself down, without attracting 
any notice, among a pile of ratlin-stuff and old 
sails, in the bottom of the yawl. While musing 
upon the singularity of my fate, I unwittingly 
daubed with a tar-brush the edges of a neatly- 
folded studding-sail which lay near me on a barrel. 
The studding-sail is now bent upon the ship, and 


MS, Found in a Bottle 


355 


the thoughtless touches of the brush are spread out 
into the word discovery. 

I have made many observations lately upon the 
structure of the vessel. Although well armed, she 
is not, I think, a ship of war. Her rigging, build, 
and general equipment, all negative a supposition 
of this kind. What she is not, I can easily per- 
ceive ; what she is, I fear it is impossible to say. I 
know not how it is, but in scrutinizing her strange 
model and singular cast of spars, her huge size and 
overgrown suits of canvas, her severely simple bow 
and antiquated stern, there will occasionally flash 
across my mind a sensation of familiar things, and 
there is always mixed up with such indistinct shad- 
ows of recollection, an unaccountable memory of 
old foreign chronicles and ages long ago. * * * 

I have been looking at the timbers of the ship. 
She is built of a material to which I am a stranger. 
There is a peculiar character about the wood which 
strikes me as rendering it unfit for the purpose to 
which it has been applied. I mean its extreme 
porousness, considered independently of the worm- 
eaten condition which is a consequence of naviga- 
tion in these seas, and apart from the rottenness at- 
tendant upon age. It will appear perhaps an ob- 
servation somewhat over-curious, but this wood 
would have every characteristic of Spanish oak, if 


356 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Spanish oak were distended by any unnatural 
means. 

In reading the above sentence, a curious 
apothegm of an old weather-beaten Dutch navi- 
gator comes full upon my recollection. “It is as 
sure,” he was wont to say, when any doubt was en- 
tertained of his veracity, “ as sure as there is a sea 
where the ship itself will grow in bulk like the living 
body of the seaman.” * * * 

About an hour ago, I made bold to thrust myself 
among a group of the crew. They paid me no 
manner of attention, and, although I stood in the 
very midst of them all, seemed utterly unconscious 
of my presence. Like the one I had first seen in 
the hold, they all bore about them the marks of a 
hoary old age. Their knees trembled with infirm- 
ity; their shoulders were bent double with decrepi- 
tude; their shriveled skins rattled in the wind; their 
voices were low, tremulous, and broken; their eyes 
glistened with the rheum of years; and their gray 
hairs streamed terribly in the tempest. Around 
them, on every part of the deck, lay scattered mathe- 
matical instruments of the most quaint and obsolete 
construction. * * * 

I mentioned, some time ago, the bending of a 
studding-sail. From that period, the ship, being 
thrown dead off the wind, has continued her terrific 


MS. Found in a Bottle 


357 


course due south, with every rag of canvas packed 
upon her, from her trucks to her lower studding-sail 
booms, and rolling every moment her top-gallant 
yard-arms into the most appalling hell of water 
which it can enter into the mind of man to imagine. 
I have just left the deck, where I find it impossible 
to maintain a footing, although the crew seem to 
experience little inconvenience. It appears to me a 
miracle of miracles that our enormous bulk is not 
swallowed up at once and forever. We are surely 
doomed to hover continually upon the brink of eter- 
nity, without taking a final plunge into the abyss. 
From billows a thousand times more stupendous 
than any I have ever seen, we glide away with the 
facility of the arrowy sea-gull; and the colossal 
waters rear their heads above us like demons of the 
deep, but like demons confined to simple threats, 
and forbidden to destroy. I am led to attribute 
these frequent escapes to the only natural cause 
which can account for such effect. I must suppose 
the ship to be within the influence of some strong 
current, or impetuous under-tow. * * * 

I have seen the captain face to face, and in his 
own cabin — but, as I expected, he paid me no atten- 
tion. Although in his appearance there is, to a 
casual observer, nothing which might bespeak him 
more or less than man, still, a feeling of irrepres- 


358 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

sible reverence and awe mingled with the sensation 
of wonder with which I regarded him. In stature, 
he is nearly my own height; that is, about five feet 
eight inches. He is of a well-knit and compact 
frame of body, neither robust nor remarkably other- 
wise. But it is the singularity of the expression 
which reigns upon the face — it is the intense, the 
wonderful, the thrilling evidence of old age, so 
utter, so extreme, which excites within my spirit a 
sense — a sentiment ineffable. His forehead, al- 
though little wrinkled, seems to bear upon it the 
stamp of a myriad of years. His gray hairs are 
records of the past, and his grayer eyes are sybils of 
the future. The cabin floor was thickly strewn 
with strange, iron-clasped folios, and moldering in- 
struments of science, and obsolete long-forgotten 
charts. His head was bowed down upon his hands, 
and he pored, with a fiery unquiet eye, over a paper 
which I took to be a commission, and which, at all 
events, bore the signature of a monarch. He mut- 
tered to himself — as did the first seaman whom I 
saw in the hold — some low peevish syllables of a 
foreign tongue; and although the speaker was close 
at my elbow, his voice seemed to reach my ears from 
the distance of a mile. * * * 

The ship and all in it are imbued with the spirit 
of Eld. The crew glide to and fro like the ghosts 


MS. Found in a Bottle 


359 


of buried centuries; their eyes have an eager and 
uneasy meaning; and when their fingers fall 
athwart my path in the wild glare of the battle- 
lanterns, I feel as I have never felt before, although 
I have been all my life a dealer in antiquities, and 
have imbibed the shadows of fallen columns at Baal- 
bec and Tadmor, and Persepolis, until my very soul 
has become a ruin. * * * 

When I look around me, I feel ashamed of my 
former apprehensions. If I trembled at the blast 
which has hitherto attended us, shall I not stand 
aghast at a warring of wind and ocean, to convey 
any idea of which, the words tornado and simoon 
are trivial and ineffective? All in the immediate 
vicinity of the ship, is the blackness of eternal night, 
and a chaos of foamless water; but, about a league 
on either side of us, may be seen, indistinctly and 
at intervals, stupendous ramparts of ice, towering 
away into the desolate sky, and looking like the 
walls of the universe. * * * 

As I imagined, the ship proves to be in a current 
— if that appellation can properly be given to a tide 
which, howling and shrieking by the white ice, thun- 
ders on to the southward with a velocity like the 
headlong dashing of a cataract. * * * 

To conceive the horror of my sensations is, I pre- 
sume, utterly impossible; yet a curiosity to pene- 


360 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

trate the mysteries of these awful regions, predomi- 
nates even over my despair, and will reconcile me 
to the most hideous aspect of death. It is evident 
that we are hurrying onward to some exciting 
knowledge — some never-to-be-imparted secret, 
whose attainment is destruction. Perhaps this cur- 
rent leads us to the southern pole itself. It must 
be confessed that a supposition apparently so wild 
has every probability in its favor. * * * 

The crew pace the deck with unquiet and tremu- 
lous step; but there is upon their countenances an 
expression more of the eagerness of hope than of 
the apathy of despair. 

In the meantime the wind is still in our poop, 
and, as we carry a crowd of canvas, the ship is at 
times lifted bodily from out the sea! Oh, horror 
upon horror! — the ice opens suddenly to the right, 
and to the left, and we are whirling dizzily, in im- 
mense concentric circles, round and round the bor- 
ders of a gigantic amphitheatre, the summit of 
whose walls is lost in the darkness and the distance. 
But little time will be left me to ponder upon my 
destiny! The circles rapidly grow small— we are 
plunging madly within the grasp of the whirlpool — 
and amid a roaring, and bellowing, and thundering 
of ocean and of tempest, the ship is quivering — 
O God ! and — going down ! 



THE MIRACLE OF THE WHITE WOLF 
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch 
I. The Tale or Snorri Gamlason 

In the early summer of 1358, with the breaking 
up of the ice, there came to Brattahlid, in Green- 
land, a merchant-ship from Norway, with provi- 
sions for the Christian settlements on the coast. 
The master’s name was Snorri Gamlason, and it 
happened that as he sailed into Eric’s Fiord and 
warped alongside the quay, word was brought to 
him that the Bishop of Garda had arrived that day 
in Brattahlid, to hold a confirmation. Whereupon 
this Snorri went ashore at once, and, getting audi- 
361 


362 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

ence of the Bishop, gave him a little book, with an 
account of how he had come by it. 

The book was written in Danish, and Snorri 
could not understand a word of it, being indeed un- 
able to read or to write; but he told this tale: 

His ship, about three weeks before, had run into 
a calm, which lasted for three days and two nights, 
and with a northerly drift she fell away, little by 
little, toward a range of icebergs which stretched 
across and ahead of them in a solid chain. But 
about noon of the third day the color of the sky 
warned him of a worse peril, and soon there came 
up from the westward a bank of fog, with snow in 
it, and a wind that increased until they began to 
hear the ice grinding and breaking up — as it seemed 
— all around them. Snorri steered at first for the 
southward, where had been open water; but by and 
by found that even here were drifting bergs. He 
therefore put his helm down and felt his way 
through the weather by short boards, and so, with 
the most of his men stationed forward to keep a 
lookout, fenced, as it were, with the danger, steer- 
ing and tacking, until by God’s grace the fog lifted, 
and the wind blew gently once more. 

And now in the clear sunshine he saw that the 
storm had been more violent than any had sup- 
posed; since the wall of ice, which before had been 


363 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 

solid, was now burst and riven in many places, and 
in particular to the eastward, where a broad path 
of water lay before them almost like a canal, but 
winding here and there. Toward this Snorri 
steered and entered it with a fair breeze. 

They had come, he said, but to the second bend 
of this waterway, when a seaman, who had climbed 
the mast on the chance of spying an outlet, called 
out in surprise that there was a ship ahead of them, 
but two miles off, and running down the channel 
before the wind, even as they. At first he found 
no credit for this tale, and even when those on deck 
spied her mast and yard overtopping a gap between 
two bergs, they could only set it down for a mirage 
or cheat of eyesight in the clear weather. 

But by and by, said Snorri, they could not doubt 
they were in chase of a ship, and, further, that they 
were fast overtaking her. For she steered with no 
method, and shook with every slant of wind, and 
anon went off before it like a helpless thing, until 
in the end she was fetched up by the jutting foot of 
a berg, and there shook her sail, flapping with such 
noise that Snorri’s men heard it, though yet a mile 
away. 

They bore down upon her, and now took note 
that this sail of hers was ragged and frozen, so that 
it flapped like a jointed board, and that her rigging 


364 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

hung in all ways and untended, but stiff with rime; 
and drawing yet nearer, they saw an ice-line about 
her hull, so deep that her timbers seemed bitten 
through, and a great pile of frozen snow upon her 
poop, banked even above her tiller; but no helms- 
man, and no living soul upon her. 

Then Snorri let lower his boat, and was rowed 
toward her; and, coming alongside, gave a hail, 
which was unanswered. But from the frozen pile 
by the tiller there stuck out a man’s arm, ghastly to 
see. Snorri climbed on board by the waist, where 
her sides were low and a well reached aft from the 
mast to the poop. There was a cabin beneath the 
poop, and another and larger room under the deck 
forward, between the step of the mast and the bows. 
Into each of these he broke with axes and bars, and 
in the one found nothing but some cooking-pots and 
bedding; but in the other — that is, the after-cabin — 
the door, as he burst it in, almost fell against a 
young man seated by a bed. So life-like was he 
that Snorri called aloud in the doorway, but anon, 
peering into the gloomy place, perceived the body 
to be frozen upright and stiff, and that on the bed 
lay another body, of a lady slight and young, and 
very fair. She, too, was dead and frozen; yet her 
cheeks, albeit white as the pillow against which they 
rested, had not lost their roundness. Snorri took 


365 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 

note also of her dress and of the coverlet reaching 
from the bed’s foot to her waist, that they were of 
silk for the most part, and richly embroidered, and 
her shift and the bed-sheets about her of fine linen. 
The man’s dress was poor and coarse by compari- 
son; yet he carried a sword, and was plainly of 
gentle nurture. The sword Snorri drew from its 
sheath and brought away ; also he took a small box 
of jewels; but little else could he find on the ship, 
and no food of any kind. 

His design was to leave the ship as he found it, 
carrying away only these tokens that his story, 
when he arrived at Brattahlid, might be received 
with faith; and to direct where the ship might be 
sought for. But as he quitted the cabin some of his 
men shouted from the deck, where they had discov- 
ered yet another body frozen in a drift. This was 
an old man seated with crossed legs and leaning 
against the mast, having an ink-horn slung about 
his neck, and ahnost hidden by his gray beard, and 
on his knee a book, which he held with a thumb 
frozen between two pages. 

This was the book which Snorri had brought to 
Brattahlid, and which the Bishop of Garda read 
aloud to him that same afternoon, translating as he 
went ; the ink being fresh, the writing clerkly ; and 
scarcely a page damaged by the weather. It bore 


366 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

no title; but the Bishop, who afterward caused his 
secretary to take a copy of the tale, gave it a very 
long one, beginning: “ God’s mercy shown in a mir- 
acle upon certain castaways from Jutland, at the 
Feast of the Nativity of His Blessed Son, our 
Lord, in the year MCCCLVII, whereby He made 
dead trees to put forth in leaf, and comforted des- 
perate men with summer in the midst of the Frozen 
Sea” . . . with much beside. But all this 

appears in the tale, which I will head only with the 
name of the writer. 

II. Peter Kurt's Manuscript 

Now that our troubles are over, and I sit by the 
mast of our late unhappy ship, not knowing if I am 
on earth or in paradise, but full-fed and warm in all 
my limbs, yea pierced and glowing with the love of 
Almighty God, I am resolved to take pen and use 
my unfrozen ink in telling out of what misery His 
hand hath led us to this present Eden. 

I who write this am Peter Kurt, and I was the 
steward of my master Ebbe while he dwelt in his 
own castle of Nebbegaard. Poor he was then, and 
poor, I suppose, he is still in all but love and the 
favor of God; but in those days the love was but an 
old servant’s (to wit, my own), and the favor of 


367 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 

God not evident, but the poverty, on the other 
hand, bitterly apparent in all our housekeeping. 

We lived alone, with a handful of servants — 
sometimes as few as three — in the castle which 
stands between the sandhills and the woods, as you 
sail into Veile Fiord. All these woods, as far away 
as to Rosen void, had been the good knight his fa- 
ther's, but were lost to us before Ebbe’s birth, and 
leased on pledge to the Knight Borre, of Egeskov, 
of whom I am to tell; and with them went all the 
crew of verderers, huntsmen, grooms, prickers, and 
ostringers that had kept Nebbegaard cheerful the 
year round. His mother had died at my master’s 
birth, and the knight himself but two years after, 
so that the lad grew up in his poverty with no heri- 
tage but a few barren acres of sand, a tumbling 
house, and his father’s sword, and small prospect of 
winning the broad lands out of Borre’s clutches. 

Nevertheless, under my tutoring he grew into a 
tall lad and a bold, a good swordsman, skilful at the 
tilt and in handling a boat; but not talkative or free 
in his address of strangers. The most of his days 
he spent in fishing, or in the making and mending 
of gear; and his evenings, after our lesson in sword- 
play, in the reading of books (of which Nebbegaard 
had good store), and especially of the Icelanders, 
skalds and sagamen; also at times in the study of 


368 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

Latin with me, who had been bred to the priest- 
hood, but left it for love of his father, my foster- 
brother, and now had no ambition of my own but to 
serve this lad and make him as good a man. 

But there were days when he would have naught 
to do with fishing or with books ; dark days when I 
forbore and left him to mope by the dunes, or in the 
great garden which had been his mother’s, but was 
now a wilderness untended. And it was then that 
he first met with the lady Mette. 

For as he walked there one morning, a little be- 
fore noon, a swift shadow passed overhead between 
him and the sun, and almost before he could glance 
upward a body came dropping out of the sky and 
fell with a thud among the rose-bushes by the east- 
ern wall. It was a heron, and after it swooped the 
bird which had murdered it; a white ger-falcon of 
the kind which breeds in Greenland, but a trained 
bird, as he knew by the sound of the bells on her 
legs as she plunged through the bushes. Ebbe ran 
at once to the corner where the birds struggled ; but 
as he picked up the pelt he happened to glance to- 
ward the western wall, and in the gateway there 
stood a maiden with her hand on the bridle of a 
white palfrey. Her dog came running toward 
Ebbe as he stood. He beat it off, and carrying 
the pelt across to its mistress, waited a moment si- 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 369 

lently, cap in hand, while she called the great falcon 
back to its lure and leashed it to her wrist, which 
seemed all too slight for the weight. 

Then, as Ebbe held out the dead heron, she shook 
her head and laughed. 4 4 1 am not sure, sir, that 
I have any right to it. We flushed it yonder be- 
tween the wood and the sandhills, and, though I did 
not stay to consider, I think it must belong to the 
owner of the shore-land.” 

44 It is true,” said Ebbe, 44 that I own the shore- 
land, and the forest, too, if law could enforce right. 
But for the bird you are welcome to it, and to as 
many more as you care to kill.” 

Upon this she knit her brows. 44 The forest? 
But I thought that the forest was my father’s? My 
name,” said she, 44 is Mette, and my father is the 
Knight Borre, of Egeskov.” 

44 1 am Ebbe of Nebbegaard, and,” said he, per- 
ceiving the mirth in her eyes, 44 you have heard the 
rhyme upon me: 

“ 6 Ebbe from Nebbe, with all his men good, 

Has neither food nor firing-wood.’ ” 

44 1 had not meant to be discourteous,” said she, 
contritely; 44 but tell me more of these forest-lands.” 

44 Nay,” answered Ebbe, 44 hither comes riding 
your father with his men. Ask him for the story, 


370 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

and when he has told it you may know why I can- 
not make him or his daughter welcome at Nebbe- 
gaard.” 

To this she made no reply, but with her hand on 
the palfrey’s bridle went slowly back to meet her 
father, who reined up at a little distance and waited, 
offering Ebbe no salutation. Then a groom helped 
her to the saddle, and the company rode away to- 
ward Egeskov, leaving the lad with the dead bird in 
his hand. 

For weeks after this meeting he moped more than 
usual. He had known before that Sir Borre would 
leave no son, and that the lands of Nebbegaard, if 
ever to be won back, must be wrested from a woman 
— and this had ever troubled him. It troubled me 
the less because I hoped there might be another way 
than force; and even if it should come to that, Sir 
Borre’s past treachery had killed in me all kindness 
toward his house, male or female. 

He and my old master and five other knights of 
the eastern coast had been heavily oppressed by the 
Lord of Trelde, Lars Trolle, who owned many 
ships, and, though no better than a pirate, claimed 
a right of levying tribute along the shore that faces 
Fiinen, upon pretence of protecting it. After en- 
during many raids and paying toll under threat 
for years, these seven knights banded together to 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 371 

rid themselves of this robber; but word of their 
meetings being carried to Trolle, he came secretly 
one night to Nebbegaard with three ships’ crews, 
broke down the doors, and finding the seven assem- 
bled in debate, made them prisoners and held them 
at ransom. My master, a poor man, could only 
purchase release by the help of his comrade, Borre, 
who found the ransom, but took in exchange the 
lands of Nebbegaard, to hold them until repaid out 
of their revenues ; but of these he could never after 
be brought to give an account. We on our part 
had lost the power to enforce it, and behind his own 
strength he could now threaten us with Lars 
Trolle’s, to whom he had been reconciled. 

Therefore I felt no tenderness for Sir Borre’s 
house, if by any means our estates could be recov- 
ered. But after this meeting with Sir Borre’s 
daughter, I could see that my young lord went 
heavily troubled; and I began to think of other 
means than force. 

It may have been six months later that word 
came to us of great stir and bustle at Egeskov. 
Sir Borre, being aged, and anxious to see his daugh- 
ter married before he died, had proclaimed a Bride- 
show. Now the custom is, and the rule, that any 
suitor (so he be of gentle birth) may offer 
himself in these contests; nor will the parents 


372 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

begin to bargain until he has approved himself — 
a wise plan, since it lessens the disputing, which 
else might be endless. So when this news reached 
us I looked at my master, and he, perceiving what 
I would say, answered it. 

“ If Holgar will carry me,” said he, “ we will 
ride to Egeskov.” 

This Holgar was a stout roan horse, foaled at 
Nebbegaard, but now well advanced in years, and 
the last of that red stock for which our stables had 
been famous. 

“ He will carry you thither,” said I; “and by 
God’s grace, bring you home with a bride behind 
you.” 

Upon this my master hung his head. “ Peter,” 
he said, “ do not think I attempt this because it is 
the easier way.” 

“ It comes easier than fighting with a woman,” 
I answered. “ But you will find it hard enough 
when the old man begins to haggle.” 

I did not know then that the lad’s heart was 
honestly given to this maid ; but so it was, and had 
been from the moment when she stood before him 
in the gateway. 

So to Egeskov we rode, and there found no less 
than forty suitors assembled, and some with a hun- 
dred servants in retinue. Sir Borre received us 


373 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 

with no care to hide his scorn, though the hour had 
not come for putting it into words; and truly my 
master’s arms were old-fashioned, and with the 
dents they had honorably taken when they cased his 
father, made a poor, battered show, for all my 
scouring. 

Nevertheless, I had no fear when his turn came 
to ride the ring. Three rides had each wooer under 
the lady Mette’s eyes, and three rings Ebbe carried 
off and laid on the cushion before her. She stooped 
and passed about his neck the gold chain, which 
she held for the prize; but I think they exchanged 
no looks. Only one other rider brought two rings, 
and this was a son of Lars Trolle, Olaf by name, 
a tall young knight, and well-favored, but disdain- 
ful; whom I knew Sir Borre must favor if he 
could. 

I could not see that the maiden favored him 
above the rest, yet I kept a close eye upon this 
youth, and must own that in the jousting which 
followed he carried himself well. For this the most 
of the wooers had fresh horses, and I drew a long 
breath when, at the close of the third course, my 
master, with two others, remained in the lists. For 
it had been announced to us that the last courses 
should be ridden on the morrow. But now Sir 
Borre behaved very treacherously, for perceiving 


874 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

(as I am sure) that the horse Holgar was over- 
wearied and panting, he gave word that the sport 
should not be stayed. More by grace of Heaven 
it was than by force of riding that Ebbe unhorsed 
his next man, a knight’s son from Smalling; but 
in the last course, which he rode against Olaf of 
Trolle, who had stood a bye, his good honest beast 
came to the tilt-cloth with knees trembling, and at a 
touch rolled over, though between the two lances (I 
will swear) there was nothing to choose. I was 
quick to pick up my dear lad; but he would have 
none of my comfort, and limped away from the 
lists as one who had borne himself shamefully. 
Yea, and my own heart was hot as I led Holgar 
back to stable, without waiting to see the prize 
claimed by one who, though a fair fighter, had not 
won it without foul aid. 

Having stalled Holgar I had much ado to find 
his master again, and endless work to persuade him 
to quit his sulks and join the other suitors in the 
hall that night, when each presented his bride-gift. 
Even when I had won him over, he refused to take 
the coffer I placed in his hands, though it held his 
mother’s jewels, few but precious. But entering 
with the last, as became his humble rank of esquire, 
he laid nothing at the lady’s feet save his sword and 
the chain that she herself had given him. 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 37 5 

“ You bring little, Squire Ebbe,” said the Knight 
Borre, from his seat beside his daughter. 

“ I bring what is most precious in the world to 
me,” said Ebbe. 

“ Your lance is broken, I believe? ” said the old 
knight scornfully. 

“My lance is not broken,” he answered; “else 
you should have it to match your word.” And ris- 
ing, without a look at Mette, whose eyes were 
downcast, he strode back to the door. 

I had now given up hope, for the maid showed 
no sign of kindness, and the old man and the youth 
were like two dogs — the very sight of the one set 
the other growling. Yet — since to leave in a huff 
would have been discourteous — I prevailed on my 
master to bide over the morrow, and even to mount 
Holgar and ride forth to the hunt which was to 
close the Bride-show. He mounted, indeed, but 
kept apart and well behind Mette and her brisk 
group of wooers. For, apart from his lack of in- 
clination, his horse was not yet recovered; and 
by and by, as the prickers started a deer, the 
hunt swept ahead of him and left him riding 
alone. 

He had a mind to turn aside and ride straight 
back to Nebbegaard, whither he had sent me on to 
announce him (and dismally enough I obeyed), 


376 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

when at the end of a green glade he spied Mette 
returning alone on her white palfrey. 

“ For I am tired of this hunting,” she told him, 
as she came near. “ And you? Does it weary you 
also, that you lag so far behind? ” 

“ It would never weary me,” he answered; “ but 
I have a weary horse.” 

“ Then let us exchange,” said she. “ Though 
mine is but a palfrey, it would carry you better. 
Your roan betrayed you yesterday, and it is better 
to borrow than to miss excelling.” 

“ My house,” answered Ebbe, still sulkily, “ has 
had enough of borrowing of Egeskov; and my 
horse may be valueless, but he is one of the few 
things dear to me, and I must keep him.” 

“ Truly then,” said she, “ your words were 
nought, last night, when you professed to offer me 
the gifts most precious to you in the world.” 

And before he could reply to this, she had 
pricked on and was lost in the woodland. 

Ebbe sat for a while as she left him, considering, 
at the crossing of two glades. Then he twitched 
Holgar’s rein and turned back toward Nebbegaard. 
But at the edge of the wood, spying a shepherd 
seated below in the plain by his flock, he rode down 
to the man, and called to him and said: 

“ Go this evening to Egeskov and greet the lady 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 377 

Mette, and say to her that Ebbe of Nebbegaard 
could not barter his good horse, the last of his fa- 
ther’s stable. But that she may know he was hon- 
est in offering her the thing most precious to him, 
tell her further what thou hast seen.” 

So saying, he alighted off Holgar, and, smooth- 
ing his neck, whispered a word in his ear. And the 
old horse turned his muzzle and rubbed it against 
his master’s left palm, whose right gripped a dag- 
ger and drove it straight for the heart. This was 
the end of the roan stock of Nebbegaard. 

My master Ebbe reached home that night with 
the mire thick on his boots. Having fed him, I 
went to the stables, and finding no Holgar made 
sure that he had killed the poor beast in wrath for 
his discomfiture at the tilt. The true reason he 
gave me many days after. I misjudged him, judg- 
ing him by his father’s temper. 

On the morrow of the Bride-show the suitors 
took their leave of Egeskov, under promise to re- 
turn again at the month’s end and hear how the lady 
Mette had chosen. So they went their ways, none 
doubting that the fortunate one would be Olaf of 
Trelde; and, for me, I blamed myself that we had 
ever gone to Egeskov. 

But on the third morning after the Bride-show 
I changed this advice very suddenly; for going at 


378 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

six of the morning to unlock our postern gate, as 
my custom was, I found a tall black stallion teth- 
ered there and left without a keeper. His harness 
was of red leather, and each broad crimson rein 
bore certain words embroidered: on the one “A 
Straight Quarrel is Soonest Mended”; on the 
other, “ Who Will Dare Learns Swiftness.” 

Little time I lost in calling my master to admire, 
and having read what was written, he looked in my 
eyes and said, “ I go back to Egeskov.” 

“ That is well done,” said I; “ may the Almighty 
God prosper it ! ” 

“ But,” said he doubtfully, “ if I determine on a 
strange thing, will you help me, Peter? I may 
need a dozen men; men without wives to miss 
them.” 

“ I can yet find a dozen such along the fiord,” I 
answered. 

“ And we go on a long journey, perhaps never 
to return to Nebbegaard.” 

“ Dear master,” said I, “ what matter where my 
old bones lie after they have done serving you? ” 
He kissed me and rode away to Egeskov. 

“ I thought that the Squire of Nebbe had done 
with us,” Sir Borre began to sneer, when Ebbe 
found audience. “ But the Bride-show is over, my 
man, and I give not my answer for a month yet.” 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 379 

“ Your word is long to pledge, and longer to re- 
deem,” said Ebbe. “ I know that, were I to wait 
a twelvemonth, you would not of free will give me 
Mette.” 

“ Ah, you know that, do you? Well, then, 
you are right, Master Lackland, and the greater 
your impudence in hoping to wile from me 
through my daughter what you could not take by 
force.” 

Ebbe replied, “ I was prepared to find it diffi- 
cult, but let that pass. As touching my lack of 
land, I have Nebbegaard left; a poor estate and 
barren, yet I think you would be glad of it, to add 
to the lands of which you robbed us.” 

“ Well,” said Borre, “ I would give a certain 
price for it, but not my daughter, nor anything near 
so precious to me.” 

“ Give me one long ship,” said Ebbe; “ the swift- 
est of your seven which ride in the strait between 
Egeskov and Stryb. You shall take Nebbegaard 
for her, since I am weary of living at home and 
care little to live at all without Mette.” 

Borre’s eyes shone with greed. “ I commend 
you,” said he; “ for a stout lad there is nothing 
like risking his life to win a fortune. Give me the 
deeds belonging to Nebbegaard, and you shall have 
my ship Gold Mary ” 


380 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

“ By your leave,” said Ebbe, “ I have spent some 
time in watching your ships upon the fiord; and the 
ship in my mind was the White Wolf ” 

Sir Borre laughed to find himself outwitted, for 
the White Wolf could outsail all his fleet. But in 
any case he had the better of the bargain and could 
afford to show some good-humor. Moreover, 
though he knew not that Mette had any tenderness 
for this youth, his spirits rose at the prospect of 
getting him out of the way. 

So the bargain was struck, and as Nebbe rode 
homewards to his castle for the last time, he met 
the shepherd who had taken his former message. 
The man was waiting for him, and (as you guess) 
by Mette’s orders. 

“ Tell the lady Mette,” said Ebbe, “ that I have 
sold Nebbegaard for the White Wolf, and that two 
nights from now my men will be aboard of her; also 
that I sup with her father that evening before the 
boat takes me off from the Bent Ness.” 

So it was that two nights later Ebbe supped at 
Egeskov, and was kept drinking by the old knight 
for an hour maybe after the lady Mette had risen 
and left the hall for her own room. 

And at the end, after the last speeding-cup, needs 
must Sir Borre (who had grown friendly beyond 
all belief) see him to the gate and stand there bare- 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 381 

headed among his torch-bearers while my master 
mounted the black stallion that was to bear him to 
Bent Ness, three miles away, where I waited with 
the boat. 

But as Ebbe shook his rein, and moved out of 
the torchlight, came the damsel Mette stealing out 
of the shadow upon the far side of the horse. He 
reached down a hand, and she took it, and sprang 
up behind him. 

“ For this bout, Sir Borre, I came with a fresh 
horse! ” called my master blithely; and so, striking 
spur, galloped off into the dark. 

Little chance had Sir Borre to overtake them. 
The stallion was swift, our boat waiting in the lee 
of the Ness, the wind southerly and fresh, the 
White Wolf ready for sea, with sail hoisted and but 
one small anchor to get on board or cut away if need 
were. But there was no need. Before the men of 
Egeskov reached the Ness and found there the 
black stallion roaming, its riders were sailing out 
of the strait with a merry breeze. So began our 
voyage. 

My master was minded to sail for Norway and 
take service under the king. But first, coming to 
the island of Laeso, he must put ashore and seek a 
priest by whom he and the lady Mette were safely 
made man and wife. Two days he spent at the is- 


382 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

land, and then, with fresh store of provisions, we 
headed northward again. 

It was past Skagen that our troubles began, witn 
a furious wind from the northeast against which 
there was no contending, so that we ran from it and 
were driven for two days and a night into the wide 
sea. Even when it lessened, the wind held in the 
east; and we, who could handle the ship, but knew 
little of reckoning, crept northward again in the 
hope to sight the coast of Norway. For two days we 
held on at this, lying close by the wind, and in good 
spirits, although our progress was not much; but 
on the third blew another gale — this time from the 
southeast — and for a week gale followed gale, 
and we went in deadly peril, yet never losing 
hope. The worst was the darkness, for the year 
was now drawing toward Yule, and as we 
pressed farther north we lost almost all sight of the 
sun. 

At length, with the darkness and the bitter cold 
and our stores running low, we resolved to let the 
wind take us with what swiftness it might to what- 
soever land it listed; and so ran westward, with 
darkness closing upon us, and famine and a great 
despair. 

But the lady Mette did not lose heart, and the 
worst of all (our failing cupboard) we kept from 


383 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 

her, so that she never lacked for plenty. Truly her 
cheerfulness paid us back, and her love for my mas- 
ter, the like of which I had not seen in this world; 
no, nor dreamed of. Hand in hand this pair would 
sit, watching the ice which was our prison and the 
great North Lights, she close against Ebbe’s side 
for warmth, and (I believe) as happy as a bird; he 
trembling for the end. The worst was to see her 
at table pressing food to his mouth and wondering 
at his little hunger; while his whole body cried out 
for the meat, only it could not be spared. 

Though she must know soon, none of us had the 
heart to tell her; and not out of pity alone, but 
because with her must die out the last spark by 
which we warmed ourselves. 

But there came a morning — I write it as of a 
time long ago, and yet it was but yesterday, praise 
be unto God! — there came a morning when I 
awoke and found that two of our men had died in 
the night, of frost and famine. They must be hid- 
den before my mistress discovered aught; and so 
before her hour of waking we weighted and 
dropped the bodies overside into deep water; for 
the ice had not yet wholly closed about us. Now as 
I stooped, I suppose that my legs gave way be- 
neath me. At any rate, I fell; and in falling struck 
my head against the bulwarks, and opened my eyes 


384 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

in that unending dusk to find the lady Mette stoop- 
ing over me. 

Then somehow I was aware that she had called 
for wine to force down my throat, and had been 
told that there was no wine; and also that with this 
answer had come to her the knowledge, full and 
sudden, of our case. Better had we done to trust 
her than to hide it all this while, for she turned to 
Ebbe, who stood at her shoulder, and “ Is not this 
the feast of Yule?” she asked. My master bent 
his head, but without answering. 

“ Ah! ” she cried to him. “ Now I know what 
I have longed to know, that your love is less than 
mine, for you can love yet be doubtful of miracles; 
while to me, now that I have loved, no miracle can 
be aught but small.” She bowed herself over me. 
“ Art dying, old friend? Look up and learn that 
God, being Love, deserts not lovers.” 

Then she stooped and gathered, as I thought, a 
handful of snow from the deck; but lo! when she 
pressed it to my lips, and I tasted, it was heavenly 
manna. 

And looking up past her face I saw the ribbons 
of the North Lights fade in a great and wide sun- 
light, bathing the deck and my frozen limbs. Nor 
did they feel it only, but on the wind came the noise 
of bergs rending, springs breaking, birds singing, 


385 


The Miracle of the White Wolf 

many and curious. And with that, as I am a sinful 
man, I gazed up into green leaves ; for either we had 
sailed into Paradise or the timbers of the White 
Wolf were swelling with sap and pushing forth 
bough upon bough. Yea, and there were roses at 
the mast’s foot, and my fingers, as I stretched them, 
dabbled in mosses. While I lay there, breathing 
softly, as one who dreams and fears to awake, I 
heard her voice talking among the noises of birds 
and brooks, and by the scent it seemed to be in a 
garden; but whether it spake to me or to Ebbe I 
knew not, nor cared. “ The Lord is my Shepherd, 
and guides me,” it said, “ wherefore I lack nothing. 
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He 
leadeth me by comfortable streams: He reviveth 
my soul. Yea, though I walk through the valley 
of the shadow of death, I will fear no harm: Thy 
rod and Thy staff they comfort me.” But, a little 
after, I knew that the voice spake to my master, 
for it said: “ Let us go forth into the field, O be- 
loved: let us lodge in the villages: let us get up 
betimes to the vineyard and see if the vine have 
budded, if its blossom be open, the pomegranates 
in flower. Even there will I give thee my love.” 
Then looking again I saw that the two had gone 
from me and left me alone. 

But, blessed be God, they took not away the 


386 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

vision, and now I know certainly that it is no cheat. 
For here sit I, dipping my pen into the unfrozen 
ink, and, when a word will not come, looking up 
into the broad branches and listening to the birds 
till I forget my story. It is long since they left 
me; but I am full fed, and the ship floats pleas- 
antly. After so much misery I am as one rocked 
on the bosom of God; and the pine resin has a 
pleasant smell. 


THE BOWMEN 
Arthur Machen 

It was during the retreat of the Eighty Thou- 
sand, and the authority of the censorship is suffi- 
cient excuse for not being more explicit. But it 
was on the most awful day of that awful time, on 
the day when ruin and disaster came so near that 
their shadow fell over London far away ; and, with- 
out any certain news, the hearts of men failed 
within them and grew faint; as if the agony of the 
army in the battlefield had entered into their souls. 

On this dreadful day, then, when three hundred 
thousand men in arms with all their artillery swelled 
like a flood against the little English company, 
there was one point above all other points in our 
battle line that was for a time in awful danger, not 
merely of defeat, but of utter annihilation. With 
the permission of the censorship and of the military 
expert, this corner may, perhaps, be described as a 
salient, and if this angle were crushed and broken, 
then the English force as a whole would be shat- 
tered, the Allied left would be turned, and Sedan 
would inevitably follow. 

All the morning the German guns had thun- 
dered and shrieked against this corner, and against 
the thousand or so of men who held it. The men 
387 


388 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

joked at the shells, and found funny names for 
them, and had bets about them, and greeted them 
with scraps of music-hall songs. But the shells 
came on and burst, and tore good Englishmen limb 
from limb, and tore brother from brother, and as 
the heat of the day increased so did the fury of that 
terrific cannonade. There was no help, it seemed. 
The English artillery was good, but there was not 
nearly enough of it; it was being steadily battered 
into scrap iron. 

There comes a moment in a storm at sea when 
people say to one another, “ It is at its worst; it 
can blow no harder,” and then there is a blast ten 
times more fierce than any before it. So it was in 
these British trenches. 

There were no stouter hearts in the whole world 
than the hearts of these men; but even they were 
appalled as this seven-times-heated hell of the 
German cannonade fell upon them and over- 
whelmed them and destroyed them. And at this 
very moment they saw from their trenches that a 
tremendous host was moving against their lines. 
Five hundred of the thousand remained, and as far 
as they could see the German infantry was pressing 
on against them, column upon column, a gray 
world of men, ten thousand of them, as it appeared 
afterward. 


The Bowmen 


389 


There was no hope at all. They shook hands, 
some of them. One man improvised a new version 
of the battle-song, “ Good-bye, good-bye to Tip- 
perary,” ending with “ And we shan’t get there.” 
And they all went on firing steadily. The officers 
pointed out that such an opportunity for high-class 
fancy shooting might never occur again; the 
Germans dropped line after line; the Tipperary 
humorist asked, “What price Sidney Street?” 
And the few machine-guns did their best. But 
everybody knew it was of no use. The dead gray 
bodies lay in companies and battalions, as others 
came on and on and on, and they swarmed and 
stirred and advanced from beyond and beyond. 

“ World without end. Amen,” said one of the 
British soldiers with some irrelevance as he took 
aim and fired. And then he remembered — he says 
he cannot think why or wherefore — a queer vege- 
tarian restaurant in London where he had once or 
twice eaten eccentric dishes of cutlets made of len- 
tils and nuts that pretended to be steak. On all 
the plates in this restaurant there was printed a 
figure of St. George in blue, w T ith the motto, Adsit 
Anglis Sanctus Georgius — May St. George be a 
present help to the English. This soldier happened 
to know Latin and other useless things, and now, 
as he fired at his man in the gray advancing mass 


390 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

- — three hundred yards away — he uttered the pious 
vegetarian motto. He went on firing to the end, 
and at last Bill on his right had to clout him cheer- 
fully over the head to make him stop, pointing out 
as he did so that the King’s ammunition cost money 
and was not lightly to be wasted in drilling funny 
patterns into dead Germans. 

For as the Latin scholar uttered his invocation 
he felt something between a shudder and an electric 
shock pass through his body. The roar of the battle 
died down in his ears to a gentle murmur; instead 
of it, he says, he heard a great voice and a shout 
louder than a thunder-peal crying, “ Array, array, 
array ! ” 

His heart grew hot as a burning coal, it grew 
cold as ice within him, as it seemed to him that a 
tumult of voices answered to his summons. He 
heard, or seemed to hear, thousands shouting: “ St. 
George! St. George!” 

“Ha! messire; ha! sweet Saint, grant us good 
deliverance! ” 

“ St. George for merry England! ” 

“Harow! Harow! Monseigneur St. George, 
succor us.” 

“Ha! St. George! Ha! St. George! a long 
bow and a strong bow.” 

“ Heaven’s Knight, aid us ! ” 


The Bowmen 391 

And as the soldier heard these voices he saw be- 
fore him, beyond the trench, a long line of shapes, 
with a shining about them. They were like men 
who drew the bow, and with another shout, their 
cloud of arrows flew singing and tingling through 
the air toward the German hosts. 

The other men in the trench were firing all the 
while. They had no hope; but they aimed just as 
if they had been shooting at Bisley. 

Suddenly one of them lifted up his voice in the 
plainest English. 

“ Gawd help us! ” he bellowed to the man next 
to him, “ but we’re blooming marvels ! Look at 
those gray gentlemen, look at them! D’ye see 
them? They’re not going down in dozens nor in 
’undreds; it’s thousands, it is. Look! look! there’s 
a regiment gone while I’m talking to ye.” 

“Shut it!” the other soldier bellowed, taking 
aim, “ what are ye gassing about? ” 

But he gulped with astonishment even as he 
spoke, for, indeed, the gray men were falling by 
the thousands. The English could hear the gut- 
tural scream of the German officers, the crackle of 
their revolvers as they shot the reluctant; and still 
line after line crashed to the earth. 


392 More Mystery Tales for Boys and Girls 

All the while the Latin-bred soldier heard the 
cry: 

“Harow! Harow! Monseigneur, dear saint, 
quick to our aid! St. George help us! ” 

“ High Chevalier, defend us! ” 

The singing arrows fled so swift and thick that 
they darkened the air; the heathen horde melted 
from before them. 

*3 e * * * * * 

“ More machine-guns! ” Bill yelled to Tom. 

“ Don’t hear them,” Tom yelled back. “ But, 
thank God, anyway; they’ve got it in the neck.” 

In fact, there were ten thousand dead German 
soldiers left before that salient of the English army, 
and consequently there was no Sedan. In Ger- 
many, a country ruled by scientific principles, the 
Great General Staff decided that the contemptible 
English must have employed shells containing an 
unknown gas of a poisonous nature, as no wounds 
were discernible on the bodies of the dead German 
soldiers. But the man who knew what nuts tasted 
like when they called themselves steak knew also 
that St. George had brought his Agincourt Bow- 
men to help the English. 


THE END 


















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